New era in precision medicine for pancreatic cancer

The development of new treatments for pancreatic cancer is set to be transformed by a network of clinical trials, aiming to find the right trial for the right patient, after a £10 million investment from Cancer Research UK. The investment will support the PRECISION Panc project which aims to develop personalised treatments for pancreatic cancer patients, improving the options and outcomes for a disease where survival rates have remained stubbornly low. The work is being jointly led by researchers from the Cancer Research UK/Medical Research Council Oxford Institute for Radiation Oncology, the University of Glasgow, the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute, the Cancer Research UK Glasgow Clinical Trials Unit, the University of Manchester, the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute, the Institute for Cancer Research, and the Cancer Research UK Cambridge Institute. The Oxford team will be investigating the potential role of radiotherapy in personalised therapy. The researchers will use the molecular profile of each individual cancer to offer patients and their doctor a menu of trials that might benefit them. The first wave of research will establish the best way to collect and profile patient tissue samples. Each patient will have up to five samples taken from their tumour at diagnosis for analysis at the University of Glasgow.