Studying Biomarkers in Patients With Pancreatic Cancer

Using material that is already being acquired as a component of clinical care (only that which is excess after routine clinical care), we will determine if pre-treatment markers can be used to correlate with clinical outcomes of survival and recurrence. Examples of such markers include studying if the integrity of DNA repair pathway in pancreatic cancers, analyzed by Rad51 and phosphorylated DNA-PK foci formation, correlates with tumor response to radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and overall survival. The markers targeted are proteins secreted by cancer cells and/or cancer associated cells.

A method of extracting and identifying secreted cytokines and growth factors from tissues of the quantity of typical biopsy tissues has been developed.The purpose of this study is to determine if this method of biomarker discovery can now be applied to pancreatic cancer population.