Personalised medicine for biliary tract and pancreatic cancers

Abstract

Associate Professor Yoshimasa Saito of Keio University, Japan, and Dr Gerda Egger of the Medical University of Vienna and Ludwig Boltzmann Institute Applied Diagnostics in Austria, have teamed up to continue their work into modelling and researching the molecular pathways of treatment-resistant biliary duct (cholangiocarcinoma) and pancreatic cancers. The teams are taking a four-step process to research this area, with a view to identifying new therapies that can target individual cancers. The first step is to continue to culture organoid models of the cancers for study and drug screening. Secondly, a range of analyses will be undertaken on these models, by both teams, to identify stage-specific biomarkers of diseases. In the third stage, the identified molecular epigenomic and genetic biomarkers will be validated using CRISPR/Cas9 editing to develop disease models in organoids and mice. Lastly, these models and those developed from patients’ own tumour samples will be used to screen drugs for personalised therapy.