Will stopping a tiny protein improve pancreatic cancer treatment?
Cancer types:
Pancreatic cancer
Project period:
–
Research institute:
Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU)
Award amount:
£196,500
Location:
Qatar
Dr Omar Khan and his team are investigating whether targeting a tiny protein called RAB25 could help to improve the effectiveness of chemotherapy for patients with pancreatic cancer. This work could one day lead to better treatment outcomes for patients with pancreatic cancer, and for patients with other types of cancer too.
Why is this research needed?
Pancreatic cancer can be very difficult to detect and treat. A chemotherapy drug called gemcitabine is sometimes the only option and unfortunately this drug is not effective for some patients. For many, their cancers soon develop resistance and the drug stops working. More effective ways to treat this disease are urgently needed.
Dr Khan and his team have found important clues that suggest reducing levels of a particular protein in pancreatic cancer cells could make the cells more vulnerable to chemotherapy. This has never before been investigated in pancreatic cancer, so the team are excited to be using Curestarter funding to find out more. They hope that this work will one day lead to better treatments, and provide much needed hope for people affected by pancreatic cancer
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What is the science behind this project?
Dr Khan and his team will be looking at RAB25, a protein that is thought to help cancer cells to grow and divide, and that is known to be involved in tumour development.
They want to understand exactly how RAB25 can help pancreatic cancer cells survive. To do this they will use a mini-version of a pancreatic tumour, called an ‘organoid'. These tiny bundles of cells closely mimic how pancreatic tumours grow and survive in the body.
The team will use molecular techniques to destroy RAB25 in these organoids, before treating them with gemcitabine. This will establish if RAB25 can help pancreatic cancer cells overcome chemotherapy treatment, which would open up several new possibilities for patients.
For example, doctors could potentially use this information to find which patients are most likely to benefit from gemcitabine treatment. Patients can then receive ‘personalised medicine ‘ - treatments that are most likely to help them, as soon as possible.
What difference could this project make to patients in the future?
This work could also pave the way for new therapies that can actually target RAB25 alongside chemotherapy, offering new hope for patients with gemcitabine-resistant pancreatic cancer. And since RAB25 is also involved in other cancers, including breast cancer, lung cancer, ovarian cancer and liver cancer, discoveries made about RAB25 in pancreatic cancer could also one day help these patients too.
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