Project Details
Projekt
Coordination Funds
Applicant
Professorin Dr. Elisabeth Heßmann
Subject Area
Gastroenterology
Term
since 2024
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 426671079
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) remains a major challenge in cancer medicine with a desperate need to develop better treatment strategies. In fact, PDAC still displays the highest mortality rate among all solid tumors in mankind. Major causes for its devastating disease outcome are the exceptionally aggressive tumor biology and the remarkable resistance to anti-tumor treatments. Both characteristics are orchestrated at the level of genome dynamics, in particular by chromatin regulation, transcription, and DNA repair mechanisms. Importantly, genome dynamic processes are not only important drivers of PDAC progression and define therapy response, they also provide specific therapeutic vulnerabilities for potential clinical application. Consequently, the major goal of the Clinical Research Unit 5002 (CRU5002) is to define the mechanisms and functional relevance of altered genome dynamics in PDAC and to exploit them for precise PDAC treatment. Our initiative builds on the complementary and longstanding expertise of the participating scientists and clinicians in PDAC research and genome dynamics, which represent scientific core areas of the University Medical Center Göttingen (UMG). The seven highly interlinked scientific projects of our CRU are directly supported by two essential core projects providing and characterizing preclinical tumor models, as well as platforms for sequencing technologies and biomedical informatics. In the first funding period, the CRU5002 has developed a unique preclinical pipeline reaching from the generation and comprehensive molecular characterization of patient-derived PDAC models, over platforms for the integration and interpretation of experimental and clinical data to standardized drug testing approaches. Scientific achievements accomplished during the first funding period underscore the prognostic and therapy-predictive value of genome dynamics in PDAC therapy. In the second funding period, the CRU5002 will build on and extend those scientific and structural achievements. We envision to translate key-findings of the CRU5002 into Investigator Initiated Clinical Trials and as an evolution of our program, we will connect to the Molecular Tumor Board (MTB) of the UMG. This will foster the direct clinical implementations of our findings. The CRU tremendously benefits from the expanding scientific and clinical infrastructure at the Göttingen Campus and has unlimited access to a large amount of patient tumor material and corresponding clinical annotations via the MTB and the interdisciplinary Molecular Pancreatic Cancer Program of the UMG. We anticipate that the scientific concept, the joint collaborations of outstanding scientists, and the strategic integration of the CRU5002 into the designated local research focus, will not only improve our understanding of genome dynamics in PDAC biology and therapy response but will also create solid foundations for tailored treatment strategies in PDAC.
DFG Programme
Clinical Research Units
