Jreissati Family Pancreatic Cancer Centre in Collaboration with Royal Melbourne

Project Summary

This project centres on the development of a novel clinical screening tool in people with diabetes and chronic pancreatitis for the early detection of pancreatic cancer. This research brings together for the first time the disciplines of gastroenterology and endocrinology to unify their different perspectives of pancreatic disease as well as endocrine and exocrine dysfunction. This project aims to find a correlation between the diagnosis of type 3c diabetes and the onset of pancreatic cancer. The investigators are long term colleagues and have together created an extensive database over 20 years comprising >10,000 patients with diabetes and/or chronic pancreatitis treated at the Royal Melbourne and Epworth Hospitals. Given over 96,000 people are diagnosed with diabetes annually in Australia it would be cost prohibitive to screen all people for pancreatic cancer, however determining diabetes disease subtypes such as classifying with features of type 3c diabetes along with weight categories, age, family history of neoplasia and blood biomarkers, may provide us with a novel and cost-effective screening application. This research is novel and aims to challenge the status quo by altering diagnostic paradigms to improve outcomes for people with pancreatic cancer.