The project
During chronic pancreatitis, inflammation causes an accumulation of ‘scar tissue’ that dramatically changes the tissue’s physical mechanics; cell sensing of mechanical changes influences their behaviour, known as mechanobiology, which drives pancreatic cancer progression. Acinar-to-ductal metaplasia (ADM) is one of the earliest events that triggers the development of precursor lesions that progress into pancreatic cancer. Our knowledge of mechanobiology in ADM is completely unknown.
Dr Matthew Walker from Glasgow University will explore these mechanisms in great depth alongside tools for early cancer detection, which are lacking. Mechanobiology is key to unlocking detection and treatment by identifying new diagnostic and therapeutic targets
What are you going to do?
Matthew and his team will bioengineer fluid-gel models of healthy and pancreatitis tissue to study early pancreatic cancer and the mechanobiology signalling involved. Insights into new mechanobiological signalling pathways will help to reveal new pathways to therapeutically target and prevent pre-cancerous lesions from progressing to pancreatic cancer.
The team will also look to identify new biomarkers which are released from the cells during periods of mechanical stress. This will help predict the onset of pre-cancerous lesions at the very earliest stage of cancer progression. Matthews final objective is to use non-invasive, optical microscopy to measure mechanical changes for diagnosis.
Why is this research important?
Early diagnostic tools are lacking in pancreatic cancer and mechanobiology is key to unlocking detection of this extremely deadly cancer.
Investigating the role of mechanobiology during early cancer development is clearly important given the lack of knowledge in this area and holds great potential for identification of novel therapeutic and diagnostic targets. Hopefully increasing the therapeutic window and significantly improve patient outcomes.
My work will provide new insights and opportunities that have never been explored before to tackle pancreatic cancer by targeting mechanobiology at the very earliest stages of disease
How do I get involved?
This opportunity is open to anyone affected by pancreatic cancer including patients, survivors, carers and loved ones:
For more information on the focus groups and steering committee/patient advisory group: please email Matthew (matthew.walker@glasgow.ac.uk) quoting the involvement reference ‘RIN focus group’.
For the opportunity to review a document: please email the Research Team (research@pancreaticcancer.org.uk) quoting the involvement reference ‘RIN Walker document review’.
No scientific background or prior experience is needed to take part in this opportunity.
