An April 2021 study by the American Cancer Society said,
"We thought, if we had a way to use human pancreatic cells to forward engineer cancer, we could begin to understand the earliest steps in the development of this disease,"
"This model could also serve as a platform to potentially discover biomarkers -- measurable changes linked to disease -- that we hope to use in the clinic to monitor cancer development."
"It's like a cooking recipe -- a complex recipe, with no precedent,"
"Only when you use all the right ingredients in the right proportions and do them in the correct sequence do you get the cells becoming the acinar cells."
"Understanding the mechanisms that regulate these events will provide important insights into the events regulating the initiation of pancreatic cancer,"
"The idea is to see if we can identify biomarkers to benefit future patients -- including by screening those at high risk for pancreatic cancer, so we can catch it before it's too late."