Project CancerProfile
IHU Strasbourg + Luxembourg Institute of Health.

With a 5-year survival rate remaining in the single digits, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma cancer (PDAC) has the poorest prognosis of all digestive cancers due to the lack of early diagnosis and limited response to treatments. It is the deadliest worldwide, with a mortality which is predicted to increase in western countries as population age and levels of obesity rise. It often develops without apparent symptoms, and the diagnosis is typically established late in the progression of the disease, at which point only 15 to 20% of patients are eligible for surgical resection, which remains the only curative treatment. Thus, palliative chemotherapy remains a mainstay in the management of this disease. However, the strong resistance to currently used chemotherapeutic agents represents a major treatment bottleneck, and the development of effective therapeutic approaches to fight PDAC is still an urgent medical need.

CancerProfile is a multidisciplinary translational research project aimed at improveing early diagnosis and prediction of PDAC tumor response to treatments, combining cutting edge Artificial Intelligence-augmented histological imaging and innovative functional profiling of patient tumor-derived organoids, to foster precision medicine of PDAC. The project will lay the foundation for a large clinical study to evaluate the implementation of personalized treatment for PDAC patients. It will lead to the establishment of a unique biobanking and database organization, that can serve as a platform for other basic and translational European research projects.