Please congratulate CHIRI colleague (School of Biomedical Sciences), Professor Marco Falasca, recipient of the Avner Pancreatic Cancer Foundation ‘Accelerator Grant 2016′ to fund high quality projects that can clearly demonstrate support for the Foundation’s vision ‘To break through 40 years of no progress by doubling the number of people who survive pancreatic cancer by 2020′. 

‘A novel therapeutic target in pancreatic cancer: Implications for therapy and diagnosis’.  In summary, the project team have discovered that a protein named GPR55 promotes pancreatic cancer growth. Their preliminary data demonstrates that a GPR55 inhibitor, in combination with a drug used in therapy, is able to increase survival in mice that develop pancreatic cancer. The project team’s plan is to identify more potent drug combinations to treat pancreatic cancer and also identify new marker that will enable to diagnose pancreatic cancer earlier.  For further details the press release can be found here.