Pancreatic Interception/High-Risk Cohorts Dream Team - Stand Up To Cancer

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SU2C–Lustgarten Foundation Pancreatic Cancer Interception Dream Team:
Intercepting Pancreatic Cancer in High-Risk Cohorts

Grant Term: February 2018–January 2022

The SU2C–Lustgarten Foundation Pancreatic Cancer Interception Dream Team’s goal is to intercept pancreatic cancer in high-risk patients through careful early detection and targeted immune prevention. Working first with relatives of people with pancreatic cancer, this team seeks to create a test to screen people at risk for pancreatic cancer to potentially detect the cancer earlier and offer the most effective treatment options to patients.

ABOUT THIS TEAM’S RESEARCH

Currently there is no suitable screening test for pancreatic cancer. The goal of the SU2C–Lustgarten Foundation Pancreatic Cancer Interception Dream Team is to actively block pancreatic cancer at its earliest stages in patients at high risk.

The team is testing 2,000 pancreatic cancer patients for genetic mutations and screening the immediate family members of mutation carriers for their own pancreatic cancer risk. Cancer-free relatives who carry a mutation are being invited to enter an active screening protocol, tied to computer-based “deep learning” imaging that can detect cancers too small to be seen by the human eye. A subset of high-risk individuals who are currently cancer-free but have precancerous lesions in their pancreas are being invited to participate in the first-ever clinical trial of a vaccine to prevent pancreatic cancer.

Finally, the team is developing a “blood test” for very early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, to be applied to people at high risk, such as those with new-onset diabetes.

This Dream Team is part of the SU2C Cancer Interception Initiative, an approach that looks for ways to actively intervene in the formation of the disease rather than treating it only after it is fully developed, and is part of the Pancreatic Cancer Collective portfolio of research.

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