Getting on cancer's nerves: exploring how the tumour's environment helps it grow

Pancreatic cancer is difficult to diagnose and as a result is often discovered at a later stage of disease. By that time, successful treatment has all but become impossible and less than 1% of people survive their diagnosis for 10 years or more. The immediate environment of the tumour can have a major impact on the prognosis but is not very well understood at this point.

Dr Edna Cukierman wants to change this by studying certain cells that surround pancreatic tumours. These cells – cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) – play an important role in the tumour’s environment. Pancreatic CAFs also contain certain proteins that are usually present in nerve endings. These nerve proteins are overexpressed in CAFs, suggesting that they play an important role in pancreatic cancer. Dr Cukierman and her team are working to uncover how these nerve proteins promote the growth of pancreatic cancer. They hope their results will support the development of new effective treatments for pancreatic cancer in the future.