Pancreatic Cancer

Pancreatic cancer is the fifth most common cause of cancer death, with a 5-year survival rate of only 3%. It often has a very poor prognosis since it is commonly not diagnosed until it is at an advanced stage and the cancer has metastasized. CA19.9 is the most widely used biomarker in the clinical diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. There are currently no screening methods for the early detection of pancreatic cancer. Several small studies exploring new biomarkers have shown encouraging results, but further work is needed to validate novel screening biomarkers for early detection of pancreatic cancer.

There has been major effort in exploring this further using the UKCTOCS biobank. The availability of samples in the years leading up to diagnosis, offers a unique opportunity for discovery and validation of novel, screening serum biomarkers. Currently a number of academic and industrial collaborations are underway aiming to identify potential biomarkers that in addition to CA19.9 may afford some utility for the early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer.

Interrogation of UKCTOCS serum bank for existing and novel markers of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC), Biliary Tract Cancer (BTC) and Liver Cancer (LC)

Steve Pereira (Institute of Hepatology, Department of Medicine, UCL); Dr John Timms (UCL), Usha Menon, Aleksandra Gentry-Maharaj (UCL)
Pancreatic Cancer UK

Serial Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning Classifiers For Personalised Risk Stratification and Early Detection of Lung, Bowel and Pancreatic Cancers in Women (SAICRED)

Dr Oleg Bluyss, Prof Alexey Zaikin, Prof Usha Menon (UCL), Dr Sophia Apostolidou (UCL)
CRUK

Construction of Graph-Based Network Longitudinal Algorithms to Identify Screening AND Prognostic Biomarkers and Therapeutic Targets

Prof Alexey Zaikin, Dr Oleg Blyuss, Prof Usha Menon (UCL), Dr Andy Ryan (UCL), Dr Sophia Apostolidou (UCL)
MRC

An investigation of novel autoantibody biomarkers for cancer screening and diagnosis of pancreatic cancer

Commercial Collaboration