The Latest Advancements in Pancreatic Cancer Research on Display at the 2026 AACR Conference on Pancreatic Cancer

From September 25-28, 2026, the American Association of Cancer Researchers (AACR) hosted the 2026 AACR Conference on Pancreatic Cancer Research: New Frontiers in Biology and Therapeutic Development. This international gathering highlights the latest advancements in the biology, detection, treatment and prevention of pancreatic cancer. This annual event brings researchers, clinicians, patients, caregivers, and advocates together for a weekend of presentations, poster sessions, and opportunities to engage and connect on the important issues facing the pancreatic cancer community. The Hirshberg Foundation is proud to support this vital gathering and is honored to highlight the members from our community of past Seed Grant awardees and Scientific Advisory Board who were invited to present at this year’s conference.

Enhanced Understanding of Tumor Cell Biology

To be able to design effective therapies to fight pancreatic cancer, researchers must understand how cancer cells develop and function as well as how subtypes of pancreatic cancer differ from each other in how they drive the disease. Two talks, one from a past and one from a current Seed Grant recipient, highlight some of the important research furthering our understanding of the basic biology driving pancreatic cancer.

Rushika Perera, PhD, the Deborah Cowan endowed Professor, School of Medicine at UCSF, is a past Seed Grant recipient and current member of the Scientific Advisory Board. Dr. Perera’s presentation, “Decoding lysosome-mediated cellular adaptation in primary vs. metastatic PDAC” highlighted a mechanism that allows PDAC cells to metastasize to sites such as the liver or lung. Her lab has developed a technique to isolate lysosomes, organelles important for metabolism, from tumor cells to evaluate how the lysosome contributes to PDAC. They’ve identified that an enzyme called LGMN is differentially expressed in tumor cells in different sites. When absent, cells can escape from the pancreas and spread to other organs where they then express LGMN to colonize the new tissue and continue to grow. This work from Dr. Perera’s lab establishes a role for the lysosome in the process of tumor cell metastasis in PDAC.

Nina Steele, PhD, is an Assistant Professor Department of Internal Medicine at University of Cincinnati and a 2026 Hirshberg Foundation Seed Grant recipient. Dr. Steele’s presentation, “Spatial Transcriptomics on a Diverse Pancreatic Cancer Cohort Reveals Race Related Differences in Tumor Subtypes and Immune Microenvironments” highlighted the increased incidence of pancreatic cancer in Black African Americans and the under-representation of samples from these patients available for translational and mechanistic research. Dr. Steele and collaborators combined gene expression, imaging, and single cell data to map tumor regions in patients’ samples obtained from a highly diverse repository. They found that Black African American samples had a higher percentage of tumor cells with an intermediate (hybrid) subtype compared to Non-African American samples as well as unique features in the tumor microenvironment including B cells and high expression of a suppressive protein called TFGβ. The impact these differences in cell subtypes and microenvironment make on disease progression and treatment response are currently unknown and an active area of interest. Dr. Steele is continuing to add diverse data sets to a human pancreas resource called PancScape to help bridge this disparity in translational research moving forward.

Increasing Early Detection and Interception

In her presentation “Turning the tide: Transforming the paradigm from advanced treatment to early detection”, Diane Simeone, MD, Professor at UC San Diego, Director of the UCSD Moores Comprehensive Cancer Center, and alumnae of the Hirshberg Foundation Scientific Advisory Board highlighted how a focus on early detection could lead to better outcomes for pancreatic cancer patients. Dr. Simeone spoke about the mission of The PRECEDE Consortium to transform risk assessment, early detection and prevention in pancreatic cancer to achieve a 50% 5-year survival rate by 2035. As a PRECEDE principal investigator, Dr. Simeone is part of this collaborative effort by medical centers around the world to standardize how high-risk patient data is collected using registries and surveillance programs so that genetic testing and high-risk screening becomes standard of care for all people who meet the criteria. In addition, they plan to use and expand the existing PRECEDE cohorts to help develop technologies related to AI imaging analysis, early detection blood test validation and identification of additional high-risk populations not currently served by the current definitions. These activities will help increase the proportion of patients diagnosed with earlier stage disease where there are better outcomes and help usher in new interception therapies that have the potential to prevent pancreatic cancer from developing in at-risk individuals.

Designing Smarter Clinical Trials

Current Scientific Advisory Board member Eileen M. O’Reilly, MD, the Winthrop Rockefeller Endowed Chair in Medical Oncology at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, focused her presentation “Changing the Paradigm: Novel Trials Designs in Pancreas Cancer” on ways clinical trial design can be adapted as the pancreatic cancer field moves into a new era of drug development towards targeted therapies such as RAS/KRAS inhibitors. Dr. Reilly discussed how the following topics could be adopted to expedite new therapy development:

• Novel trials designs
• Biomarker selection criteria for trial participation
• Evaluating emerging therapies in first line or neoadjuvant settings earlier in the process
• Incorporating endpoints other than overall survival (OS) and using ctDNA as a measurement of response and evaluating biomarkers during trials
• How the validation of new AI or predictive tools could be used in the clinical setting

Dr. O’Reilly acknowledged that adopting any of these changes would be complex, but the information gained and the eventual effect on emerging therapies could accelerate the development of new treatment options for patients with pancreatic cancer.