The Hirshberg Foundation is pleased to have a trio of presentations to update us on surgery options and new techniques, including robotic surgery, that are now available to pancreatic cancer patients.

Introducing the robotic surgeons is Dr. Joe Hines, the Professor and Chief of the Division of General Surgery, Robert and Kelly Day Chair in General Surgery and the Vice Chair for Clinical Practice and Strategic Planning. He serves as the Director of the UCLA Agi Hirshberg Center for Pancreatic Diseases.

Dr. Hines attended the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine and was inducted into Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society in 1989. He trained in general surgery at UCLA, including two years of research in gastrointestinal physiology, and was then recruited to the UCLA faculty in 1997. While at UCLA he has received the Department Golden Scalpel Award for teaching excellence 10 times and the UCLA School of Medicine Award for Excellence in Education. His research has focused on angiogenesis, cytokines, and pancreatic carcinogenesis, including the role of diet in modulating these processes. Dr. Hines’ research has been consistently funded by NIH, and he has served in the NIH Scientific Review Committee Tumor Progression and Metastasis. Dr. Hines is past-President of the Society of University Surgeons and has served as the Vice-President of the Pacific Coast Surgical Association, President of the Southern California Chapter of the American College of Surgeons, and now on the Board of Governors of the American College of Surgeons and as a Director of the American Board of Surgery.

Dr. Hines will kick off the presentation on Advances in Pancreatic Surgery at the 13th Annual Symposium at UCLA.

The Hirshberg Foundation is excited to have Dr. Wainberg join us at the 13th Annual Symposium on Pancreatic Cancer to share information about the advancements that have been made in the treatment of this disease.

Dr. Zev Wainberg is Associate Professor of Medicine at UCLA and co-director of the UCLA GI Oncology Program. He was trained in medical oncology and hematology at UCLA. He completed his residency training at Albert Einstein College of Medicine and received his MD from the Sackler School of Medicine, New York Program at Tel Aviv University. His research involves a variety of clinical trials in multiple gastrointestinal cancers including pancreas, colon, gastric and esophageal.

Dr. Wainberg’s laboratory-based research efforts involve the testing of novel therapeutics against all gastrointestinal cancers. Currently, he is the recipient of several grants focused on the targeting of cancer stem cells and in molecular classification of GI cancers. Dr. Wainberg will speak on recent Advances in Chemotherapy at the 13th Annual Symposium at UCLA.

The Hirshberg Foundation is excited to have Anirban Maitra, MBBS, joining us at the 13th Annual Symposium on Pancreatic Cancer to share important information about the challenges of treating this cancer and the best way forward to make a difference in patient outcomes.

Anirban Maitra, MBBS, is Professor of Pathology and Translational Molecular Pathology at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center, and has been the Scientific Director of the Sheikh Ahmed Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research since August 1, 2013. Over the past decade, his group has made several seminal observations in the biology and genetics of pancreatic cancer. He also has extensive expertise with genetic modeling of pancreatic cancer and with experimental therapeutics and drug development for this disease. Dr. Maitra brought to Houston his passion for improving patient survival by discovering and developing ways to detect and treat pancreatic cancer.

“We need to remember that what we do in the lab needs to end up in patients. It’s not about an elegant experiment and an excellent scientific publication — it’s all about translation, translation, translation [to humans]” Dr. Maitra stresses. In his presentation at the 13th Annual Symposium, Dr. Maitra speak on Why is Pancreatic Cancer so Hard to Treat and what can we do about it?

At the 48th meeting of the European Pancreatic Club, held this past June 8, 2016, in Liverpool, winners of the Hirshberg Awards were presented by one of the leading pancreatic cancer researchers in the US. David Tuveson, M.D., Ph.D., Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory; Professor, Johns Hopkins University, handed out the Hirshberg Awards to the following winners:

Hirshberg Award for Best Paper in Pancreatic Cancer (Basic Science):
Simone Benitz, Department of Surgery, Technische Universität München, München, Germany

Hirshberg Award for Best Paper in Pancreatic Cancer (Clinical Science):
Jörg Kleeff, University of Liverpool/Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust, Liverpool, UK

Hirshberg Award for Excellence in Pancreatic Cancer Nursing:
Philip Whelan, – Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University Hospitals NHS Trust, Liverpool, UK

Hirshberg Award for Excellence in Pancreatic Cancer – Patient:
Julie Simper, Patient/Support Group Organizer for PCUK

We congratulate all the winners and look forward to supporting the EPC in the future.

Dr. Timothy Frankel, MD, University of Michigan, has received the NIH Clinical Scientist Career Development Award. This award is a 5 year study totaling $875,000. The NIH funded project is the progression of his initial study of the immune-epithelial cell cross-talk, which will help discern why patients with chronic inflammatory conditions are prone to developing pancreas cancer.

Dr. Frankel received funding from our Seed Grant Program in the 2014-2015 cycle. To date, the Foundation has supported 40 new Seed Grant projects that have generated approximately 100 million dollars to continue our aggressive path to improve the outcome of a pancreatic cancer diagnosis.

I would personally like to thank all of our donors for their continued support and for understanding the complexity and the years it takes to advance medical research. The answers are coming one step at a time and we are getting closer and closer to treating pancreatic cancer as a manageable disease.

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Stephen Pandol, MD, and Mouad Edderkaoui, PhD, from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center have developed a novel drug, Metavert, to treat pancreatic cancer. The drug is designed to prevent metastasis of pancreatic cancer and enhance the effectiveness of current treatments. Metavert targets, simultaneously, two important proteins involved in promoting cancer growth and in spreading of the disease. Their data in animals show complete prevention of cancer spreading to other organs and significant improvement of the survival time of mice.

They also found that the drug kills human cancer cells in the process of spreading to other organs when they tested Metavert with metastatic cells taken from pancreatic cancer patients at Cedars-Sinai.

Dr. Pandol, a valued member of the Hirshberg Scientific Advisory Board and Dr. Edderkaoui , a Seed Grant awardee in 2013, are featured in the video below. Watch now to see which their progress towards developing this treatment for pancreatic cancer and their plans for testing Metavert in a clinical trial in early 2018.

Advances in pancreatic cancer research happen thanks to generous donors like you whose support allows new ideas to thrive. There is more work to do but we’re getting closer! Every donation helps in our efforts. For further information about Metavert, feel free to contact me at [email protected].