Studying Biomarkers in Patients With Pancreatic Cancer

OBJECTIVES:

- To determine whether the cellular localization of BRCA1 can predict how patients with
pancreatic cancer will respond to cytotoxic agents (e.g., fluorouracil or gemcitabine
hydrochloride) or radiotherapy.

- To identify pre-treatment markers that can be used to correlate with clinical outcomes
of survival and recurrence.

- To determine if a method of extracting and identifying secreted cytokines and growth
factors from biopsy tissue can now be applied to the pancreatic cancer population.

OUTLINE: Tissue samples from biopsies performed during pancreatectomy are collected from the
Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center Human Tissue Acquisition Core for laboratory biomarker
studies. Proteins secreted by cancer cells and/or cancer-associated cells are studied by
extracting and identifying secreted cytokines and growth factors from biopsy tissue. The
integrity of the DNA repair pathway in pancreatic cancer is analyzed by Rad51 and
phosphorylated DNA-PK foci formation. Markers are correlated with clinical outcome.

Patients are followed for recurrence, relapse, and death from disease.

Inclusion criteria

- Any subject with excess tissue collected at time of routine surgery for pancreatic
cancer is eligible.

- All subjects participating in this protocol will be followed for recurrence, relapse
and death from disease