SBIR Phase II: Gene Signature Screening for Pancreatic Cancer Therapeutics from Sonoran Desert Extracts

这个小企业创新研究(SBIR)第二阶段项目是为了解决胰腺癌的高致命性。从IB阶段的资金开始筛选来自索诺兰沙漠的天然产品，这些天然产品已经产生了其他有希望的候选药物，测试对人类胰腺癌细胞的影响。第二阶段的目标是开发一种候选药物，可以改变选定的胰腺癌相关基因的表达，并杀死表达这些基因的胰腺癌细胞。候选药物将使用个性化药物方法进行开发。许多不同胰腺癌肿瘤的基因表达谱(或基因组学模式)将与药物对基因组学产生的影响相匹配。这种个性化的方法可以直接转化为临床试验，预先选择最有可能对药物有反应的患者。这项研究的更广泛影响首先是减少胰腺癌的死亡人数。2009年，胰腺癌在美国因癌症死亡的人数为35240人，在癌症死亡人数中排名第四。转移性疾病患者的5年生存率为1.8%。针对这种致命疾病的社会影响和商业价值非常高。此外，药物开发的个性化医学方法将影响许多肿瘤学项目。将每个患者的基因组模式与针对该模式的每种药物进行匹配的想法将是至关重要的。每一种癌症都不是一种疾病，而是广泛积累的基因组学变化，必须单独解决。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to address the high lethality of pancreatic cancer. Screening has begun with Phase IB funding, of natural products from the Sonoran Desert that have produced other promising drug candidates, testing effects on human pancreatic cancer cells. The objective of Phase II is to develop a drug candidate that alters expression of selected pancreatic cancer-related genes and that kills pancreatic cancer cells that express those genes. The drug candidates will be developed using a personalized medicine approach. The gene expression profiles (or genomics patterns) for many different pancreatic cancer tumors will be matched to the effects on genomics produced by the drug. This personalized approach could translate directly to clinical trials to pre-select patients most likely to respond to the drug. The broader impacts of this research are first to reduce deaths due to pancreatic cancer, which ranked fourth among the leading causes of cancer death with 35,240 deaths in the US in 2009. The 5-year survival rate for patients with metastatic disease is 1.8%. The societal impact and commercial value of targeting such a lethal disease are very high. Further, the personalized medicine approach to drug development will impact many oncology projects. The idea of matching each patient's genomics patterns with each drug that targets that pattern will be critical. Each kind of cancer is not one disease, but a wide spectrum of accumulated genomics changes that have to be addressed individually.