Precision Medicine Has Applications for Pancreatic Cancer
Cancers with a particularly poor prognosis pose a major challenge to health care in the 21st century. New research shows that a highly personalized, patient-directed approach is necessary to improve treatment outcomes.
A team led by University of Arizona researchers is taking a new, patient-directed approach to treating pancreatic cancer.
Rather than relying on conventional cell lines that have defined effective drug targets for other types of cancers, they are creating and sequencing cell lines from a cancer patient’s own tissue.
Their results reveal that pancreatic tumors are more varied than previously thought and that drug sensitivity is unique to each patient, illustrating why recent efforts to boost “personalized medicine,” such as the UA’s Precision Medicine Initiative, are so important. Read more . . .