Tal Danino, a professor at the Data Science Institute, is conducting research that could help scientists combat the most lethal of cancers: pancreatic cancer.
In a recent study, working with a team of researchers, Danino demonstrated that bacteria in pancreatic tumors degrade a chemotherapy drug — Gemcitabine — most commonly used to treat patients who have pancreatic cancer. In preclinical experiments, the team injected mice with antibiotics to see if it would mitigate the effect of the bacteria. In more than 70 percent of the mice, the antibiotics proved effective in killing the bacteria. The mice that were not given antibiotics, however, showed rapid tumor progression.