It has the highest mortality rate of all the major cancers and for the past four decades nothing has changed. But researchers at the University of Queensland are one step closer to ensuring a pancreatic cancer diagnosis is no longer a death sentence for all but the lucky few. In collaboration with Andrew Biankin at the Kinghorn Cancer Centre, Sean Grimmond from UQ’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience has sequenced the DNA of about 500 patients with pancreatic cancer, “creating the encyclopaedia” of what causes the disease. “And we’re doing that at one patient at a time,” Professor Grimmond said. “That information is very useful. We can use that to understand one of the causes, what’s promoting that cancer to start and indeed it’s giving us insights into where the vulnerabilities may be in treating those tumours. “And most importantly…we’re not treating those tumours as one disease – we’re now looking to try to personalise those therapies and look at the prospect of attacking them one patient at a time.” He predicted it would be part of regular cancer treatment within five years. The work marks the completion of the Australian contribution to the International Cancer Genome Consortium and brings researchers closer to finding treatments that work better, faster and hopefully prevent the cancer’s return. “This idea of personalising therapies isn’t unique to pancreatic cancer, but it’s the idea if we can … get the blueprint and understand the vulnerabilities, we have the chance of looking at the drugs that are currently available,” Professor Grimmond said. “They may be a breast cancer drug or a gastric cancer drug or an ovarian cancer drug, but if we think there’s vulnerability in a pancreatic cancer patient then we actually look at marrying those together to see if we can improve those outcomes.” About 470 Queenslanders are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer each year. Of those, about 415 die. Katie Clift, from Cancer Council Queensland, said there was not enough emphasis on pancreatic cancer, despite it being the fifth most common lethal cancer. “We need more first class research like what we’re seeing and celebrating here today to take place, and to give hope to these cancer patients. “…That we would have targeted treatments for people diagnosed to therefore improve survival rates is wonderful and something that we are really proud to be a part of.”