Michel IOVANNA JUAN

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most difficult solid tumors to treat as it progresses silently without any particular warning signs. Its capacity to spread malignant cells to other organs (liver, lymph nodes, peritonium…) often catches the medical profession unaware and prevents it from making an early diagnosis. One of the directions for research in my laboratory in the framework of the “PacaOmics” clinical trial program at the IPC and the APHM consists in characterizing new prognostic biomarkers and predictive of the therapeutic response of pancreatic tumors in order to facilitate the management of patients.

In the era of personalized medicine, it has become crucial to be able to provide surgeons, oncologists, gastroenterologists and radiologists with an accurate picture of the level of heterogeneity of the molecular scale of their patients’ tumors. We have therefore developed a library of human tumors xenografted on immunodepressed mice that perfectly reproduce the characteristics of primary tumors in patients from whom they have been extracted. These mice models today allow us to perform large scale analyses of DNA and gene expression, metabolism, proteins secreted by these tumors, as well as their susceptibility profile to a broad range of drugs

The success of this collection of pancreatic xenografts is the fruit of great interdisciplinarity and illustrates more broadly the relevance of translational research programs and biomedicine supported by Marseille Immunopole.