CReSt Research Fellow Dr Garan Jones has been awarded £5000 from Advanced Therapies Wales (ATW) to conduct a pioneering study aimed at advancing treatment options for pancreatic cancer, specifically Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC).
This type of cancer is particularly aggressive and difficult to treat, with new approaches urgently needed. Dr Jones will use cutting-edge Oxford Nanopore technology, which allows for detailed analysis of RNA in tumour cells. His goal is to identify specific changes in the RNA that could serve as targets for new treatments, such as RNA vaccines or therapies that silence harmful genes. This approach could pave the way for more precise and effective treatments for pancreatic cancer in the future.
Dr Jones said: “Following on from our previous work on pancreatic Neuroendocrine tumours, in which the long-read transcriptomic technology we are using allowed us to identify several novel RNA isoforms, we will be applying the techniques to PDAC tumours in this pilot study. We will hopefully use this as a basis for a more extensive future project.”
The project is a collaborative effort; Dr Harsh Bhatt, a neurosurgeon at Velindre, will co-lead the research, developing the methods alongside Dr Jones. They will also work with Professor Bilal Al-Sarireh from Swansea University.
The cancer samples needed for the study will be provided by the Wales Cancer Biobank, with sequencing being carried out at DeepSeq, a specialised lab at the University of Nottingham.
It is hoped that this pilot study could lay the foundation for innovative cancer treatments, potentially improving survival rates for those diagnosed with PDAC.