NIH funds study to personalize treatments for pancreatic cancer

Faraz Bishehsari, MD, PhD, professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston. Photo by UTHealth Houston

A study from the lab of Faraz Bishehsari, MD, PhD, professor in the Department of Internal Medicine at McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston, and director of the Gastroenterology Research Center, seeking to develop new methods to personalize treatment for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, has been funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Bishehsari’s project aims to develop a precision medicine platform for circadian-based therapeutics in pancreatic cancer. The funding comes from a two-year renewal of Bishehsari’s Transformative RO1 and an RO3, for more than $2 million funded by the Office of the Director at the NIH.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is an aggressive cancer that is challenging to treat, and most patients are ineligible for surgery at the time of diagnosis. The circadian clock acts as an internal timer that keeps sleep, energy, and digestion on a daily rhythm. In cancer, this clock can be rewired to support the tumor’s growth and energy needs.

“In this project, my goal is to reshape the trajectory of pancreatic cancer by decoding tumor-specific circadian signatures to uncover novel therapeutic options,” said Bishehsari, who holds the Atilla Ertan, MD, Chair in Gastroenterology Research. “We work with primary cells and organoids derived from human tissues, which allow us to investigate tissue-specific changes outside the body, something that was not possible until recently.”

Organoids closely mimic a patient’s tumor and can be used to study how the cancer behaves and responds to treatment.

Using these wet lab techniques, the study will examine how the internal clock functions in healthy pancreatic tissue and how cancer disrupts those rhythms. By integrating these findings with existing and newly generated datasets through a systems biology approach, Bishehsari’s team seeks to determine whether tumor rhythm alterations affect patient outcomes, and whether aligning standard treatments with a patient’s tumor rhythm, or identifying novel therapeutic targets based on that rhythm, could enhance efficacy for pancreatic cancer and potentially other cancers.