Pancreatic cancer is an aggressive tumour that is very difficult to treat and has low survival rates. Previous studies show that there are two major subtypes of tumour: classical and basal. Basal tumours tend to be more aggressive and are more associated with invasion and metastasis. Much research is being carried out to determine whether the two subtypes respond differently to the most common chemotherapies, which would mean they should each receive targeted treatment.
New research in the Medical and Molecular Oncology Laboratory of Professor Ilse Rooman at VUB is mapping the two types of tumour cells. For her PhD, Ellis Michiels developed a detection method that stains both subtypes in surgical tissue samples. ...
