The pancreas is located deep within the abdomen, where cancer cells can flourish to a lethal stage without detection. It kills 74 percent of its hosts within the first year of diagnosis and 93 percent within five years. If it has spread to other parts of the body, the average life expectancy dwindles to three to six months.
The vast majority of pancreatic cancer cases are diagnosed in late stage because there are no specific tests to detect the disease.
Surinder Batra, Ph.D., Stokes-Shackleford Professor and chair of biochemistry and molecular biology, believes he is on the trail for such a marker. It’s called micro-RNA. Dr. Batra, who was awarded the University of Nebraska’s highest honor for research, the Outstanding Research and Creative Activity (ORCA) Award, this year, studied hundreds of micro-RNA molecules and found a handful that fluctuated dramatically between the precancerous and full-blown cancer stage in a genetically engineered spontaneous pancreatic cancer mouse model.
Having established the micro-RNA patterns during different stages of mouse pancreatic cancer, he, along with colleague Satyanarayana Rachagani, Ph.D., assistant professor, biochemistry and molecular biology, then analyzed these micro-RNAs in human clinical pancreatic cancer samples and found the fluctuation was consistent with the mouse tissues.
Dr. Batra and his team are now focused on testing them as therapeutic targets as well as early detection markers for this deadly cancer.
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Read about Dr. Batra’s study on micro-RNA.
A normal mouse pancreas.
At 25 weeks, microarray analysis revealed significant fluctuation of several micro-RNAs in the mouse model at a pre-cancerous stage.
Cancer has totally demolished the mouse pancreas in 50 weeks.