Dr. Raul Rabadan is leading a global research project as part of a new grant from the Pancreatic Cancer Collective to identify high-risk factors of pancreatic cancer. (Courtesy of Stand Up to Cancer)

A global team of researchers led by theoretical physicist Raul Rabadan, PhD, professor of systems biology at Columbia’s Vagelos School of Physicians and Surgeons, and Núria Malats, MD, PhD, head of the Genetic and Molecular Epidemiology Group of the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO), are working to develop a comprehensive computational framework that will identify high-risk factors for pancreatic cancer.  

Armed with a new two-year, $1 million grant from the Pancreatic Cancer Collective, the team intends to attack pancreatic cancer research from multiple disciplines—genomics, mathematics and medicine—to provide an integrated, computational approach to studying genomic, environmental and immune factors that could identify populations at high risk of pancreatic cancer. The need for deeper understanding of the contributing factors to this lethal disease is pressing, as pancreatic cancer is projected to become the second leading cause of cancer-related mortality within the next decade. 

Drs. Raul Rabadan and Nuria Malats