What is the issue for NSW?
Pancreatic cancer is a deadly disease with just 11% of patents surviving 5 years post-diagnosis. The only chance for a long-term cure is surgery, but <15% of patients are eligible. Most patients die within months of diagnosis. Our best chemotherapies only extendaverage survival by 4 months. We need better therapies to treat this disease. Projections say it will be the second leading cause of cancer related deaths by 2030. Pancreatic cancer poses hurdles to treatment. The cancer has excess tumour scar tissue that blocks drug access, and promising but undruggable therapeutic targets. We must build capacity in the NSW Pancreatic Cancer hub, which is internationally recognised. This will help to develop clinic-ready novel therapies to overcome these hurdles.
What does the research aim to do and how?
UNSW researchers, including a partnership with the UNSW RNA Institute, will develop a novel RNA nanomedicine to treat pancreatic cancer by overcoming drug delivery barriers. It will also force tumour cells to secrete a suicide signal, while simultaneously amplifying this anti-tumour signal. We will test our nanomedicine in clinically relevant models of pancreatic cancer. These include animal models and a world-first explant model that allows treatment of 3D pieces of live pancreatic tumour tissue from patients, in a dish.