Spotlight on research: Digging into the basic biology of pancreatic cancer

Spotlight on research is with Dr Naomi Walsh, SFI-SIRG funded Senior Research Fellow at the National Institute for Cellular Biotechnology, Dublin City University

You work on cancer of the pancreas – why is this an important area to research?

“Cancer of the pancreas can be very challenging to treat, and about 450-500 people are diagnosed with it in Ireland alone each year.

The pancreas lies behind the stomach, so people generally don’t feel lumps or other early symptoms, and by the time the cancer is diagnosed it has often spread. It tends to spread quickly too, and it may not respond well to treatments.

So we want to understand more about the genes and the biochemical pathways that are linked with cancer of the pancreas, in the hope that it will point to new ways to diagnose or perhaps even treat it.”

How are you looking at what genes do in pancreatic cancer?

“Quite often when people carry out research on cancer cells, they use cells that originally came from a tumour and are kept alive in the lab. We are looking at a slightly different model.

At the National Institute for Cellular Biotechnology, where I work in DCU, there is currently a project (funded by the SFI US-Ireland R&D Partnership Programme and led by Dr Niall Barron and post-doctoral researcher Dr Sandra Roche), which involves taking pieces of tumours and growing it to create a living pancreatic cancer biobank.

My research involves growing three-dimensional ‘3D mini-tumours’ of the pancreas in the lab to see how various genes function in them.

We will stop some genes working and turn up the volume on others to see what happens.

The idea is that the 3D tumours will more realistically reflect how cancer cells behave, because they are more in form than they would be in the body.”

What kinds of genes are you looking at?

"We know quite little about the basic biology of pancreas tumours, but other studies have identified some genes that behave differently in cancer cells compared to normal pancreas cells.

When I was a researcher in the National Cancer Institute in the USA, I explored tiny differences in DNA, which we linked to biochemical ‘pathways’ that can contribute to the risk of developing pancreatic cancer.

So we want to look in more detail at how these differences in DNA, genes and pathways behave in the 3D tumours – are they involved in the cells growing, or invading and spreading?

Ultimately this information could be used as risk markers for the early diagnosis of this disease."

How far along is the project?

“It is a four-year project and we have just started. Thanks to a Science Foundation Ireland Starter Investigator Research Grant I am now able to build my own research group, and my first PhD student Shannon Nelson has begun the work.

She did her undergraduate degree in University College Cork and a Masters degree at the University of Aberdeen, and she is focused on the pancreatic cancer research project now.”

What keeps you motivated in research?

“In research you have to take the long-term view - you don’t get the highs of discoveries every day - and I think what drives me to keep going is the thirst for knowledge and really wanting to do better for patients by trying to understand the disease and finding the evidence that will help us tackle it better in the future.”

What impact will the research have?

“I think the biggest impact will be a better understanding of the biology behind pancreatic cancer. Then we can hopefully use that information to identify new ways of diagnosing the disease, and the biology itself might ultimately point to new treatments. I hope what we find will inform the wider cancer research community in that quest.”

How do you find working in DCU?

“One of the great things about being in the National Institute for Cellular Biotechnology in DCU is that we have so many people from different backgrounds here.

So I am working alongside cancer biologists, immunologists, biological chemists and pharmaceutical bio-engineers… all these clever and informed people who share what they do and look to work together on common issues.

We also have great instrumentation in the NICB, which means we have the equipment to help us answer our scientific questions.”