The Ahmed Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research at UT MD Anderson is home to one of the world's foremost pancreatic cancer research programs. Pria Foundation supports leading investigators across surgical oncology, radiation oncology, medical oncology, and cancer biology — funding the kind of high-risk, high-reward science that has the potential to make meaningful impacts for patients facing pancreatic cancer.
At MSK, Pria Foundation supports the work of Dr. Vinod Balachandran and colleagues advancing our understanding of the immune system's role in pancreatic cancer—research with direct implications for new immunotherapy approaches. MSK represents one of Pria Foundation's deepest scientific partnerships and a model for what rigorous, translational investigation can achieve.
Effective control of systemic, or circulating, disease remains one of the greatest challenges to improving long-term survival and cure in pancreatic cancer. For decades, the lack of reliable biomarkers to detect and measure systemic disease has limited our ability to tailor treatment for each patient. The Pria Foundation has supported research led by Dr. Ammar A. Javed and Dr. Christopher L. Wolfgang for almost a decade, initially at Johns Hopkins and now at NYU Langone Health. Their research seeks to address critical gaps in our knowledge of systemic disease in pancreatic cancer. Their work focuses on understanding the biology of circulating tumor cells that drive disease progression and developing new biomarkers, including circulating tumor DNA, proteomics, radiomics, and pathomics, to detect and monitor systemic disease. By integrating these approaches into multianalyte tests, their goal is to provide clinicians with a more complete picture of each patient's tumor biology and enable truly personalized treatment strategies. This precision approach has the potential to maximize each patient's opportunity for long-term survival and cure. Support from the Pria Foundation has also helped establish a multidisciplinary pancreatic cancer research team at NYU Langone Health and build PANC-PALS, a global consortium bringing together experts from around the world to accelerate collaboration and improve outcomes for patients with pancreatic cancer.
