Background: Researchers and participants who are members of minoritized populations experience negative psychosocial and wellness outcomes like burnout. Burnout may manifest uniquely for Black women in academia conducting research with Black women participants navigating similar sociocultural contexts.
Objectives: This article qualitatively interprets our experiences as 15 Black women scholar-practitioners at a midwestern university conducting community-engaged research.
Objectives: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a highly lethal disease that is challenging to detect at an early stage. Biomarkers are needed that can detect PDAC early in the course of disease when interventions lead to the best outcomes. We highlight study design and statistical considerations that inform pancreatic cancer early detection biomarker evaluation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBetter models are needed to identify active drugs to treat pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PAC) patients. We used 3D hanging drop cultures to produce spheroids from five PAC cell lines and tested nine FDA-approved drugs in clinical use. All PAC cell lines in 2D culture were sensitive to three drugs (gemcitabine, docetaxel and nab-paclitaxel), however most PAC (4/5) 3D spheroids acquired profound chemoresistance even at 10 µM.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev
September 2024
Background & Aims: Genetic testing uptake for cancer susceptibility in family members of patients with cancer is suboptimal. Among relatives of patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), The GENetic Education, Risk Assessment, and TEsting (GENERATE) study evaluated 2 online genetic education/testing delivery models and their impact on patient-reported psychological outcomes.
Methods: Eligible participants had ≥1 first-degree relative with PDAC, or ≥1 first-/second-degree relative with PDAC with a known pathogenic germline variant in 1 of 13 PDAC predisposition genes.
We previously described an approach called RealSeqS to evaluate aneuploidy in plasma cell-free DNA through the amplification of ~350,000 repeated elements with a single primer. We hypothesized that an unbiased evaluation of the large amount of sequencing data obtained with RealSeqS might reveal other differences between plasma samples from patients with and without cancer. This hypothesis was tested through the development of a machine learning approach called Alu Profile Learning Using Sequencing (A-PLUS) and its application to 7615 samples from 5178 individuals, 2073 with solid cancer and the remainder without cancer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: The aim of the study is to assess the relationship between magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-based estimation of pancreatic fat and histology-based measurement of pancreatic composition.
Materials And Methods: In this retrospective study, MRI was used to noninvasively estimate pancreatic fat content in preoperative images from high-risk individuals and disease controls having normal pancreata. A deep learning algorithm was used to label 11 tissue components at micron resolution in subsequent pancreatectomy histology.
Identifying the cells from which cancers arise is critical for understanding the molecular underpinnings of tumor evolution. To determine whether stem/progenitor cells can serve as cells of origin, we created a Msi2-Cre knock-in mouse. When crossed to CAG-LSL-Myc mice, Msi2-Cre mice developed multiple pancreatic cancer subtypes: ductal, acinar, adenosquamous, and rare anaplastic tumors.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: To quantify the rate of low-yield surgery, defined as no high-grade dysplastic precursor lesions or T1N0M0 pancreatic cancer at pathology, during pancreatic cancer surveillance.
Background: Global efforts have been made in pancreatic cancer surveillance to anticipate the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer at an early stage and improve survival in high-risk individuals (HRIs) with a hereditary predisposition. The negative impact of pancreatic cancer surveillance when surgery is performed for low-grade dysplasia or a non-neoplastic condition is not well quantified.
Purpose: CA19-9 synthesis is influenced by common variants in the fucosyltransferase (FUT) enzymes FUT3 and FUT2. We developed a clinical test to detect FUT variants, and evaluated its diagnostic performance for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC).
Experimental Design: A representative set of controls from the Cancer of the Pancreas Screening study was identified for each FUT functional group.
Structuring jobs into occupations is the first step for analysis tasks in many fields of research, including economics and public health, as well as for practical applications like matching job seekers to available jobs. We present a data resource, derived with natural language processing techniques from over 42 million unstructured job postings in the National Labor Exchange, that empirically models the associations between occupation codes (estimated initially by the Standardized Occupation Coding for Computer-assisted Epidemiological Research method), skill keywords, job titles, and full-text job descriptions in the United States during the years 2019 and 2021. We model the probability that a job title is associated with an occupation code and that a job description is associated with skill keywords and occupation codes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFExpert Rev Gastroenterol Hepatol
July 2023
Introduction: Most patients with pancreatic cancer present with advanced stage, incurable disease. However, patients with high-grade precancerous lesions and many patients with low-stage disease can be cured with surgery, suggesting that early detection has the potential to improve survival. While serum CA19.
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