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null Pancreatic cancer research: personalized approach brings new hope to patients

MUHC joins Canadian research team for precision medicine and expands genetic sequencing to the French Canadian population

Mar 6, 2018

Montreal — Few early detection tests, undetectable symptoms, limited treatment options and no known biomarkers that can be used to direct therapy. These are among the clinical challenges Canadian research team EPPIC (Enhanced Pancreatic Cancer Profiling for Individualized Care) is tackling over the next five years to improve personalized treatments for patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), a disease with just an eight percent five-year survival rate.

The Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) is proud to join forces with other partners under this Terry Fox initiative bringing new hope with personalized medicine for patients with this deadly disease. Recently funded by the Terry Fox Research Institute, this $5-million pan-Canadian precision medicine initiative is led by investigators at BC Cancer and  the University of British Columbia.

“Pancreatic cancer is expected to move past breast and colorectal cancer to become the second leading cause of cancer-related death in Canada by 2030. We need to develop innovative ways in order to better understand the biology of this aggressive cancer, identify molecular signatures and hereditary mutations, and study tumours at a deeper level. An ambitious and large project like EPPIC will help us achieve these goals,” says Dr. George Zogopoulos, EPPIC’s co-principal investigator, who is a pancreatic surgeon and a scientist at the RI-MUHC and at the Goodman Cancer Research Centre at McGill University. Read more