Broad Paper Vids: Metabolic changes signal early development of pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer is the tenth most common cancer in the United States, but the fourth most common cause of cancer death. This disparity is due, in part, to the disease’s elusive nature. Because the pancreas is located deep in the abdomen, symptoms often present only after cancer has spread to other...

Pancreatic cancer is the tenth most common cancer in the United States, but the fourth most common cause of cancer death. This disparity is due, in part, to the disease’s elusive nature. Because the pancreas is located deep in the abdomen, symptoms often present only after cancer has spread to other places in the body. But this week, a team of researchers from the Broad, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, MIT, and elsewhere reported the discovery of metabolic changes that indicate early development of the disease.

Although the mechanism linking the metabolic change to the cancer remains to be determined, the finding, which was published in Nature Medicine, is expected to spur new strategies for the early detection of pancreatic tumors. 

In this edition of Broad Paper Vids, Clary Clish, co-first author of the paper and director of the Broad’s Metabolite Profiling Platform, discusses the project’s origins, findings, and next steps.

Paper Cited:
Clish, Mayers, Wu, et al. Elevation of circulating branched-chain amino acids is an early event in human pancreatic adenocarcinoma development. Nature Medicine. doi:10.1038/nm.3686.