2021 Early Detection Innovation Grant - Prof Anubhav Mittal

Project Summary

Pancreatic cancer (PC) has the lowest survival rate of all major cancers (~11% 5-years post-diagnosis) and is projected to become the second most common cause of cancer-related death by 2030. Late diagnosis is one of the major reasons behind these dismal statistics. Most PC patients have advanced disease at diagnosis and only 20% of patients can be offered surgery, which is the only curative-intent therapy. Since current diagnostic methods are either too expensive (e.g., MRI, PET) or non-specific (e.g., Ca19-9), there is an urgent need to identify inexpensive and selective early detection biomarkers. The project team has access to specimens (urine and blood) from early diagnosed PC patients who were candidates for PC surgery, which provides them with an opportunity to identify biomarker signatures for early detection/diagnosis of PC. In this study, using samples from early diagnosed patients, the project team will develop a double-pronged approach. First, they will identify urinary metabolic- and blood protein-biomarker signatures using global high throughput approaches. Secondly, they aim to translate these signatures to simple urine and blood-based tests. This will ensure that the developed signatures can be used to economically screen at-risk populations, using simple and inexpensive urine/blood-based tests.