Quantifying tissue fibrosis with MRI
Pancreatic cancer is a deadly disease without cure. Standard chemotherapy that is effective for other types of tumors has limited effect in pancreatic cancer because the tissue around the tumor cells is very dense and does not allow therapieutic drugs to reach and kill the tumor cells. New types of treatments that can help loosen the tissue to allow drugs to get in are currently under development. Team Pancreas aims to develop an MRI approach that can determine whether the tumor microenvironment is being destroyed during treatment. If successful, this work can help: 1) expedite drug development and 2) assist physicians with patient response monitoring.
A secondary effort of team Pancreas is to test whether MRI imaging with a novel contrast agent that specifically binds fibrin can detect liver fibrosis at early stages.This project addresses an existing clinical need for non-invasive assessment of liver fibrosis as biopsy (the gold standard) suffers from sampling error, inter-observer variability, and is unsuitable for treatment monitoring.
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Team Pancreas (formerly Team Albumin)
Project statua
M+Visión project Jan 2012 – Jun 2014
On exit from M+Visión: Seeking support
M+Visión follow on project: Oct 2014 – Sep 2015
Sector
Oncology. Body MRI.
Fellows
Collaborators
Maria Allona, Rafael Alvarez
Centro Integral Oncológico Clara Campal (CIOCC)
Peter Caravan
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)
Manuel Hidalgo, Pedro Lopez, Francisca Mulero
CNIO
Juan Antonio Tamames
Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (URJC)
Media and updates
In June 2014, Team Pancreas’ Iliyana Atanasova (FKA Team Albumin) presented to the Biomedical Innovation Conference in Madrid:
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