Academic Clinical Affairs, Ofc
Twin Cities
These researchers have assembled a subsample of 32 participant samples from a group of 197 Mayo Clinic pancreatic cancer patients with tumor and adjacent normal samples drawn from a registry biobank of 4,083 cases and 2,791 controls. They will build upon this unique, high-quality Mayo Clinic Biospecimen Resource for Pancreas Research (established by mentor, Dr. Gloria Petersen) to expand characterization of the subset that contains a comprehensive and complete set of genetic and epigenetic data and that also includes detailed annotation with clinical history. The immediate goals of the project are to identify key gene expression, miRNA, and methylation markers that are important to the progression of PDAC using the tumor samples. Two core genes, KRAS and TP53, represent the most commonly mutated set of oncogenes/tumor suppressor genes in PDAC. The group aims to present interactions in the context of molecular PDAC subtypes and characterize current, well-known PDAC clinical outcomes using genomic features. They anticipate these will comprise the most comprehensive genomic-based gene interacting networks (GINs) describing PDAC progression and survival annotated with clinical information.