Understanding how we could target pancreatic cancer's Achilles' heel

Dr Miriam Martini and her team aim to better understand how the loss of a protein called PI3K-C2Y could make pancreatic cancers more vulnerable to certain treatments.

Hope for the future

Pancreatic cancer is a type of cancer we know surprisingly little about. Unfortunately, it is also notoriously difficult to treat. This is in part because pancreatic tumours are surrounded by a kind of tough matrix – called the stroma – which contains very few blood vessels. Because of this it is difficult for anything, including nutrients and drugs, to get to the tumour. This project aims to find a way to make treatments work better and improve survival rates.

Meet the scientist

In her free-time, Dr Miriam Martini is an enthusiastic dancer. She has danced since she was 6 years old and it helps her to wind down and clear her head after a long day at the lab. She says: “Dance taught me to be humble, to be hardworking and don’t give up easily”.

The science

Since they are surrounded by a tough matrix, pancreatic cancer cells need to rewire the way in which they use energy to growth and survive.These changes in energy use provide a potential target for therapy. A protein called PI3K-C2Y is one of those potential targets. Only recently discovered, it turns out that this protein plays an important role in pancreatic cancer.

In mice and humans, the loss of PI3K-C2Y comes hand in hand with a poor prognosis and increased tumour growth. The ability of these tumours to grow faster seems to be connected with changes in the way the cancer cells use energy. But this also could make these low PI3K-C2Y tumours more sensitive to certain drugs. Dr Miriam Martini and her team are now studying why cancer cells with reduced PI3K-C2Y have a growth advantage. They hope that reduced PI3K-C2Y creates weaknesses in the cancer that can be used to tailor more effective therapies.