Centre for Cancer Genomics and Molecular Therapeutics

Pancreatic cancer (PDAC) is the fourth leading cause of cancer death worldwide and is projected to be the second within a decade. Advances in therapy have only achieved incremental improvements in the overall outcome but cannot provide notable benefit for undefined subgroups of patients. The lack of any specific genomic diagnostic markers, the difficulty in establishing a tissue diagnosis, and the aggressive nature of PDAC, which respond poorly to standard treatment, contribute to the exceptionally high mortality. Since in early stages of PDAC symptoms are uncommon and nonspecific, early detection in clinical practice is challenging. As a consequence, there is an urgent need to better understand the molecular pathology of PDAC and the identification of biomarkers and novel drug targets for early diagnostics and to develop novel therapeutic strategies. One of the Centre's primary objective is to perform a comprehensive multiomic analysis of 75 pancreatic cancers with matched normal tissue samples to extract biological insights and potentially novel diagnostic biomarkers.