Pancreatic Cancer

In my previous blog I discussed some of the exciting research happening in pancreatic cancer led by our group at the BC Cancer Agency and Pancreas Centre BC.  It’s safe to say that none of this would be possible without the very generous donors of the BC Cancer Foundation.   When I came to the BC Cancer Agency several years ago, a major fundraising initiative by the Foundation helped create...

Thanks to the BC Cancer Foundation for giving me the opportunity to contribute to this month’s blog.  My research focus is in understanding the biology of and developing new treatments for pancreatic cancer.  Several weeks ago the Canadian Cancer Society released the...

Thank you to Dr. Ma for updating us on the status of VERO at BC Cancer. It is exciting to read about the first patient procedure that took place and to know that our generous donors are fuelling this progress.  

We are pleased to welcome back to our blog Dr. Daniel Renouf, medical oncologist and co-director of Pancreas Centre BC, for the month of July.

Dr. Renouf will discuss...

The first few months since joining the BC Cancer Agency have flown by. I am enjoying my new role—every day is different and presents new challenges. I have travelled to all six of our centres and meeting so many of our staff, who are passionate about making the system better, has been the most inspiring part of my job. 

I also spend a fair amount of time working with the BC Cancer...

Warm thanks to Dr. Dan Renouf, for blogging in April and sharing the work he and his colleagues are doing to improve the treatment and care of pancreatic cancer for patients across the province.

It is my pleasure to introduce our guest blogger for May, Dr. Jessica McAlpine. Dr. McAlpine is a gynaecologic oncologist and translational researcher at the BC Cancer Agency and Director of the...

At Pancreas Cancer BC, we are very interested in understanding what cellular and molecular changes initially lead to cancerous changes, and also how the environment surrounding the cancer cell interacts to cause the cancer to evade our bodies’ defence systems.

As I mentioned...

In my last several posts I discussed the research our group at BC Cancer Agency and Pancreas Centre BC, as well as others are involved in: looking at developing new treatments and ways to personalize treatment strategies for pancreatic cancer.

Today I’d like to touch on the work we and others are doing to understand what causes pancreatic cancer in the first place, an area of the...

In my last several posts I discussed some of the new treatments being developed for pancreatic cancer. As more options become available it is becoming increasingly important to improve our ability to individualize treatment strategies. 

Our group at the BC Cancer Agency and Pancreas Centre BC is very interested in studying ways to better sub-classify pancreatic cancer in the hopes of...

Earlier this week, I wrote about some of the new chemotherapies that are being developed to treat pancreatic cancer more effectively.

Another major area of new drug research in pancreatic cancer is immunotherapy: finding ways to activate the body’s immune system to contain or attack the cancer cells.

There are a number of different methods that are being investigated to activate...

In this week’s blog posts, I’d like to discuss some of the exciting developments in new drug therapies for pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic cancer has been one of the most difficult cancers to treat because it is difficult to detect early and is resistant to most chemotherapy drugs. Up until recently, very little progress had been made in finding new, effective therapies for pancreatic...