Key Points
- The Pancreatic Cancer UK Discovery and Translational Research Forum took place in Liverpool, UK, from May 20–21, 2024.
- Focused ultrasound researchers highlighted the technology’s multidimensional potential for treating pancreatic cancer.
- The Foundation thanks Dr. Petros Mouratidis for submitting this meeting report.
The Pancreatic Cancer UK Discovery and Translational Research Forum took place in Liverpool, UK, from May 20–21, 2024. This annual event brought together over 100 researchers from across the UK to discuss priority challenges in pancreatic cancer research while fostering collaboration between discovery and translational researchers. The forum serves as a platform to showcase ongoing research, facilitate connections within the research community, discuss shared challenges and potential ways to overcome them, and provide networking and development opportunities for early-career researchers.
This year’s five main topic areas were:
- The interface between technology and biology
- Targeting secondary disease
- Therapeutic resistance mechanisms
- Metabolic dysfunction and cachexia
- Addressing disparities in pancreatic cancer research
Focused ultrasound research was featured at the meeting by several investigators who attended, chaired sessions, presented their work, and contributed to panel discussions.
Dr. Keaton Jones (University of Oxford) and Dr. George Williams (University of Southampton) co-chaired the first session of the meeting, which explored the interface between technology and biology. They directed discussions on what biological questions could be uniquely answered by emerging technologies, including engineering and physical science approaches, what we could learn from other cancer sites, and how to best leverage these learnings. Discussions in this session explored how emerging technologies, such as focused ultrasound, could uniquely address key biological questions, especially those learned from other cancer sites. Dr. Petros Mouratidis (The Institute of Cancer Research, London) contributed to the panel discussion. He and Dr. Jones showcased the potential of focused ultrasound for the treatment of deep-seated tumors, including pancreatic tumors. Significant time was spent discussing the use of bioinformatics to analyze big-volume data. Both data and wet lab researchers lamented the current lack in the numbers of bioinformaticians who are available to tackle cancer-related projects.
In separate presentations, Dr. Mouratidis shared his ongoing research on the effects of histotripsy on orthotopic pancreatic cancer models. After a short introduction to therapeutic ultrasound, he showed single-cell transcriptomics results for murine orthotopic pancreatic tumors exposed to histotripsy. He demonstrated the regulation of the innate immune system and provided examples of biological processes that are activated after histotripsy exposure.
Researchers from Dr. Jones’s group at the University of Oxford updated the audience on their ongoing high-intensity focused ultrasound pancreatic cancer clinical trial.
“It is always a pleasure to participate in the PCUK Discovery and Translational Research forum,” said Dr. Mouratidis. “It is a friendly and intellectually stimulating place to be and fosters collaborations of research groups attempting to tackle pancreatic cancer in very different but potentially complementary ways. On behalf of the organizing committee, I would like to thank the Focused Ultrasound Foundation for their support of these meetings.”
The full meeting agenda and speaker list can be accessed here, and further details about the event are available on the organization’s website. The Focused Ultrasound Foundation was the sponsor of this meeting.
Pancreatic Cancer UK seeks to better support the research community. The next Pancreatic Cancer UK Discovery and Translational Research Forum has not yet been announced.
The Foundation thanks Dr. Mouratidis for writing and submitting this meeting report.