Researchers at Weill Cornell Medicine with an international team have used liver biopsies to identify cellular and molecular markers that can potentially be used to predict whether and when pancreatic cancer will spread to an individual's liver or elsewhere, such as the lung. The study, published on June 28 in Nature Medicine, proposes that information from a liver biopsy-;a small tissue sample collected for lab analysis-;when pancreatic cancer is diagnosed may help guide doctors in personalizing treatment, such as liver-directed immunotherapies, before cancer cells have the chance to metastasize. Only 10 percent of people with pancreatic cancer will survive more than two years after initial diagnosis.
If we can predict the timing and location of metastases, that could be a real game changer in treating pancreatic cancer, particularly patients at high metastatic risk." Dr. David Lyden, study co-senior author, the Stavros S.
Niarchos Professor in Pediatric Cardiology and professor of pediatrics and of cell and developmental biology at Weill Cornell Medicine In 2015, Dr. Lyden and his colleagues discovered that pancreatic cancer cells secrete factors that reach distant organs, most often the liver, to establish a pre-metastatic niche for new tumors to form. To find out how these alterations prime their new location for cancerous colonization, Dr.
Lyden collaborated with lead author Dr. Linda Bojmar, an adjunct assistant professor of molecular biology research in pediatrics at W.
