Transgenic Mouse Model of Pancreatic Cancer
This is a picture of the Pancreatic Cancer Research team taken in the Fall of 2015.
This is a H&E stained section from a transgenic mouse aged 5 months. A mixture of normal tissue and transformed tissue is evident in this section.
This slide show the loss of zymogren granules (bright green staining objects) in the surrounding transformed tissue which is largely composed of pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasias or "PanINs", which appear as the exocrine tissue composed of acinar cells is transformed into clusters of PanINs.
The goal of this project is to use a transgenic mouse model of pancreatic cancer to attempt to identify metabolic biomarkers that can be used for early detection of pancreatic cancer. The transgenic mice contained a mutant Kras gene activated specifically in the pancreas of the mice. Mice were allowed to age anywhere from 5 to 16 months and then urine and fecal samples were collected for metabolic profiling analysis. At the time of sacrifice, blood was collected for metabolic profiling analysis and the pancreas harvested by dissection. This enabled direct correlation of the status of disease progression with metabolic profiling data.