Pancreatic Cancer – Hope From Researchers

This sounds extremely preliminary, not something that will be a treatment protocol any time soon. Promising, perhaps, but there’s a lot more work to do.

No mention was made whether the experiments were in vitro or in vivo (likely it was in vitro – out side the body), nor did it even mention if human pancreatic cells were used. They could have been from mice, rats, etc. In vitro experiments are always preliminary; there is a lot of other things going on in the body which complicates things quite a bit.

Glad to see apoptosis mentioned though. That’s my husband’s area of research – understanding apoptosis mechanisms at the most fundamental level.

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Hi Kelly,

No, though the results of his research is often applicable to cancer and neuro-degenerative diseases and later, therapies for them. In other words, his research is “basic” – that is, understanding how the cell death mechanism works or doesn’t work.

It’s sort of like he works on one motor piece of a “mystery machine”. Other researchers combine what is learned by many researchers about the other parts of the “mystery machine”, eventually knowing enough about a disease to begin researching therapies. Those folks would be “clinical” researchers.

I’m planning a post on this topic soon, because “basic” research funding (primarily from NIH) is at a critical lowpoint. I won’t get too political here, but there is a lot of talk in “basic” science that the development “pipeline” of research trainees is “broken” due to the tight funding, so that there may be a critical shortage of brain power for basic research in the future. That has strong implications for disease research and eventually, therapies.

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Thanks, Kelly. My post is up now, titled Penny-wise, Progress-Foolish. You can get to by clicking my name.

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