Surinder Batra, Ph.D., professor and chairman of biochemistry and molecular biology, has a life outside the laboratory, believe it or not.
For example, he’s a sports fan. When he was a postdoc at North Carolina State University, he witnessed many Wolfpack basketball games. While at Duke University Medical Center, he fell in love with Duke basketball and attended many home games at the famed Cameron Indoor Arena. He and his teammates brought a TV into the lab, so that work would not force them to miss the Atlantic Coast Conference basketball tournament.
Upon arriving at UNMC, it didn’t take him long to bond with his kids over a shared love of Husker sports.
He also loves music. And movies.
The man has outside interests.
But when it comes to pancreatic cancer, he is as serious and relentless as . unfortunately, as is pancreatic cancer.
The deadly disease is ominous stuff. It has a nearly 100 percent mortality rate once diagnosed. This is in part because it’s so insatiable – like floods or fire, it just keeps coming; it finds a way. Worse, it lacks early warning signs – most people don’t even know they have pancreatic cancer until it’s all but too late.
It’s in the face of this that Dr. Batra has been unyielding. He’s been a prolific writer, penning papers that win publication, and grants that bring the cash needed to keep up the fight.
He and his team have uncovered clue after clue, each providing an incremental look at how this disease spreads – and hope that it can be stopped.
Now he has been named the 2012 Scientist Laureate, the highest honor given to a UNMC researcher. Dr. Batra wins the honor on the heels of his longtime friend and collaborator, Tony Hollingsworth, Ph.D., last year’s honoree.
Together, they have helped make UNMC a national leader in pancreatic cancer research.
Leadership is part of what has made Dr. Batra one of UNMC’s top scientists.
“Dr. Batra is best known for his ability to bring together and build effective multidisciplinary research collaborations,” said Jennifer Larsen, M.D., vice chancellor for research.
As principal investigator for UNMC’s Pancreatic Tumor Microenvironment Network (TMEN), Dr. Batra leads a team of teams. He oversees a project in which four labs – headed by himself and fellow UNMC research superstars, Dr. Hollingsworth, Keith Johnson, Ph.D., and Rakesh Singh, Ph.D., each study different aspects of pancreatic cancer.
The TMEN works under the auspices of a $4.2 million National Cancer Institute grant.
It also collaborates with other labs from across the country working in the same field.
Dr. Batra’s research suggests that the microenvironment of the pancreas might be a “partner in crime.” Now the team’s charge is to find out further why this is so, and how it can be stopped.
Dr. Batra’s hope is that this knowledge someday translates to a better survival rate.
But there are no easy answers, no overnight successes: “I want to see the progress every year,” Dr. Batra said. “I want to see where we are going. If it’s not working, we’ll change the direction.
“Sometimes our thinking, our hypothesis, is not correct.”
But that’s where breakthroughs come from. In order to find answers, one must first eliminate the untruths.
Now Dr. Batra spends a great deal of his time writing grants, worrying about overseeing projects and running the lab. Once, for a photo shoot with his lab team, he made a point of showing up in a suit coat instead of a lab coat.
He wanted to make clear it was his team that should get credit for doing all the day-to-day work in the lab. And if one of them has an idea, great – more minds are better than one.
For a problem this big, “I thought I should put many people together,” Dr. Batra said. That is the idea behind the collaboration with his colleagues, the TMEN.
The four of them have been working together against pancreatic cancer for more than a decade now. He and Dr. Hollingsworth have been friends and collaborators for more than two decades.
“We have been writing together for so many years, Tony Hollingsworth and I,” Dr. Batra said.
Dr. Batra first decided to tackle pancreatic cancer because it posed a fascinating chemical problem to crack. But as the years have gone by, he’s also looked at it another way.
“He is an incredibly enthusiastic and positive role model for translational investigators,” Dr. Larsen said.
Translational. That means that the work he is doing has potential applications beyond the lab. It is focused on developing new tests or treatments that may change the future diagnosis or care of pancreatic cancer.
“Anybody can get pancreatic cancer,” Dr. Batra said. “We’ve studied many people who have had the disease. Many of them died. Some survived. That’s what we want to learn. Why some are survivors. We can learn from what they are carrying, signatures, markers. We can help the many who are dying.”
They have found markers. Their team previously identified a new molecule, MUC4, which is not present in normal pancreases, but is detected in high levels in pancreatic cancer tissues. It’s a specific biomarker, and associated with progression and metastasis. But that means it has potential to be used for therapy. And Dr. Batra’s team has recently published two papers on therapeutic agents, as well.
They’ve also uncovered some novel discoveries regarding the interplay of cigarette smoke and MUC4 in pancreatic cancer: “Smoking is terrible,” Dr. Batra said.
But it’s another clue. They continue to piece them together, small clue after small clue. They’re getting a better understanding with every puzzle piece.
Right now, the research is promising, but the numbers remain bleak. The Federal government’s National Cancer Institute estimated that 43,920 people would be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and 37,390 would die of it, in 2012.
Still, Dr. Batra and his team keep coming. Like flood or fire – like the disease they are studying – they keep coming.
“It will take time,” he said. “Research sets its own pace.”
But when it comes to pancreatic cancer, he is determined to find a way.