Anirban Maitra, Scientific Director of Sheikh Ahmed Center for Pancreatic Cancer Research and Professor of Pathology and Translational Molecular Pathology at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, shared a post on X:
“Despite the many real and painful challenges that remain, 2025 was another year with remarkable advances in Pancreatic Cancer research and clinical care.
I summarized my list of top ten peer reviewed publications. Apologies to the many deserving papers and authors not here, please add!
1. Continuing his work on determinants of long term survival in Pancreatic Cancer, Vinod Balachandran confirmed the persistence of tumor reactive T cells following neoantigen targeted mRNA vaccine in the postoperative (adjuvant) setting.”
Title: RNA neoantigen vaccines prime long-lived CD8+ T cells in pancreatic cancer
Authors: Zachary Sethna, Pablo Guasp, Charlotte Reiche, Martina Milighetti, Nicholas Ceglia, Erin Patterson, Jayon Lihm, George Payne, Olga Lyudovyk, Luis A. Rojas, Nan Pang, Akihiro Ohmoto, Masataka Amisaki, Abderezak Zebboudj, Zagaa Odgerel, Emmanuel M. Bruno, Siqi Linsey Zhang, Charlotte Cheng, Yuval Elhanati, Evelyna Derhovanessian, Luisa Manning, Felicitas Müller, Ina Rhee, Mahesh Yadav, Taha Merghoub, Jedd D. Wolchok, Olca Basturk, Mithat Gönen, Andrew S. Epstein, Parisa Momtaz, Wungki Park, Ryan Sugarman, Anna M. Varghese, Elizabeth Won, Avni Desai, Alice C. Wei, Michael I. D’Angelica, T. Peter Kingham, Kevin C. Soares, William R. Jarnagin, Jeffrey Drebin, Eileen M. O’Reilly, Ira Mellman, Ugur Sahin, Özlem Türeci, Benjamin D. Greenbaum, Vinod P. Balachandran
Read the Full Article on Nature
2. The landscape of neoantigen targets in pancreatic cancer was vastly expanded through the discovery of cryptic (non-canonical) antigens by Will Freed Pastor, including shared antigenic peptides.
Title: Pancreatic cancer–restricted cryptic antigens are targets for T cell recognition
Authors: Zackery A. Ely, Zachary J. Kulstad, Gurcan Gunaydin, Sudarsana Addepalli, Eva K. Verzani, Marta Casarrubios, Karl R. Clauser, Xilin Wang, Isabelle E. Lippincott, Cedric Louvet, Thomas Schmitt, Kevin S. Kapner, Miles P. Agus, Connor J. Hennessey, James M. Cleary, Sine R. Hadrup, Susan Klaeger, Jennifer Su, Alex M. Jaeger, Brian M. Wolpin, Srivatsan Raghavan, Eric L. Smith, Philip D. Greenberg, Andrew J. Aguirre, Jennifer G. Abelin, Steven A. Carr, Tyler Jacks, William A. Freed-Pastor
Read the Full Article on Science
3. More success with vaccines in localized pancreatic cancer, this one an amphiphilic mutant KRAS targeted peptide vaccine, showing robust T cells responses associated with improved recurrence free survival.
Title: Lymph node-targeted, mKRAS-specific amphiphile vaccine in pancreatic and colorectal cancer: phase 1 AMPLIFY-201 trial final results
Authors: Zev A. Wainberg, Colin D. Weekes, Muhammad Furqan, Pashtoon M. Kasi, Craig E. Devoe, Alexis D. Leal, Vincent Chung, James R. Perry, Thian Kheoh, Lisa K. McNeil, Esther Welkowsky, Peter C. DeMuth, Christopher M. Haqq, Shubham Pant, Eileen M. O’Reilly
Read the Full Article on Nature medicine
4. This study from Eileen M O’Reilly, Anna Varghese using MSK-IMPACT data on ~2,500 tumors is an excellent resource paper on the genomic landscape of Pancreatic Cancer and the impact of KRAS allelic status and copy number on prognosis.
Title: Clinicogenomic landscape of pancreatic adenocarcinoma identifies KRAS mutant dosage as prognostic of overall survival
Authors: Anna M. Varghese, Maria A. Perry, Joanne F. Chou, Subhiksha Nandakumar, Daniel Muldoon, Amanda Erakky, Amanda Zucker, Christopher Fong, Miika Mehine, Bastien Nguyen, Olca Basturk, Fiyinfolu Balogun, David P. Kelsen, A. Rose Brannon, Diana Mandelker, Efsevia Vakiani, Wungki Park, Kenneth H. Yu, Zsofia K. Stadler, Mark A. Schattner, William R. Jarnagin, Alice C. Wei, Debyani Chakravarty, Marinela Capanu, Nikolaus Schultz, Michael F. Berger, Christine A. Iacobuzio-Donahue, Chaitanya Bandlamudi, Eileen M. O’Reilly
Read the Full Article on Nature Medicine
5. Disclosure – this is from our lab but one I feel deserves a spot. In collaboration with Linghua Wang, a thorough dissection of spatial heterogeneity and plasticity in primary and metastatic Pancreatic Cancer, including differences between organ sites.
Title: Spatial mapping of transcriptomic plasticity in metastatic pancreatic cancer
Authors: Guangsheng Pei, Jimin Min, Kimal I. Rajapakshe, Vittorio Branchi, Yunhe Liu, Benson Chellakkan Selvanesan, Fredrik Thege, Dorsay Sadeghian, Daiwei Zhang, Kyung Serk Cho, Yanshuo Chu, Enyu Dai, Guangchun Han, Mingyao Li, Cassian Yee, Kazuki Takahashi, Bharti Garg, Herve Tiriac, Vincent Bernard, Alexander Semaan, Jean L. Grem, Thomas C. Caffrey, Jared K. Burks, Andrew M. Lowy, Andrew J. Aguirre, Paul M. Grandgenett, Michael A. Hollingsworth, Paola A. Guerrero, Linghua Wang, Anirban Maitra
Read the Full Article on Nature
6.The paper above demonstrated profound heterogeneity of lineage plasticity but what are the determinants of said plasticity?
Axel Behrens and colleagues proposed a role for SPP1 (osteopontin) as a driver of mesenchymal cell fates in pancreatic cancer.”
Title: SPP1 is required for maintaining mesenchymal cell fate in pancreatic cancer
Authors: Huafu Li, Linxiang Lan, Hengxing Chen, May Zaw Thin, Hari Ps, Jessica K. Nelson, Ian M. Evans, E. Josue Ruiz, Rongjie Cheng, Li Tran, Mark Allen, Jian Ma, Tingzhuang Yi, Chunming Wang, Yulong He, Naomi Guppy, Anguraj Sadanandam, Shao-Zhen Lin, Changhua Zhang, Axel Behrens
Read the Full Article on Nature
7. Metastatic organotropism in PancreaticCancer is a fascinating topic and this study from Rosie Sears illustrated key cell intrinsic and extrinsic (host immune response) distinctions between liver and lung metastatic foci, which impact outcomes.
Title: Ongoing replication stress tolerance and clonal T cell responses distinguish liver and lung recurrence and outcomes in pancreatic cancer
Authors: Jason M. Link, Jennifer R. Eng, Carl Pelz, Kevin MacPherson-Hawthorne, Patrick J. Worth, Shamaline Sivagnanam, Dove J. Keith, Sydney Owen, Ellen M. Langer, Alison Grossblatt-Wait, Gustavo Salgado-Garza, Allison L. Creason, Sara Protzek, Julian Egger, Hannah Holly, Michael B. Heskett, Koei Chin, Nell Kirchberger, Konjit Betre, Elmar Bucher, David Kilburn, Zhi Hu, Michael W. Munks, Isabel A. English, Motoyuki Tsuda, Jeremy Goecks, Emek Demir, Andrew C. Adey, Adel Kardosh, Charles D. Lopez, Brett C. Sheppard, Alex Guimaraes, Brian Brinkerhoff, Terry K. Morgan, Gordon B. Mills, Lisa M. Coussens, Jonathan R. Brody, Rosalie C. Sears
Read the Full Article on Nature Cancer
8. This phase 3 randomized trial comparing two preoperative regimens (FOLFIRINOX versus Gem/nab-paclitaxel) showed their equivalence in Pancreatic Cancer, expanding options for neoadjuvant therapy without compromising efficacy.
Title: Neoadjuvant FOLFIRINOX versus neoadjuvant gemcitabine-based chemoradiotherapy in resectable and borderline resectable pancreatic cancer (PREOPANC-2): a multicentre, open-label, phase 3 randomised trial
Authors: Quisette P Janssen, Jacob L van Dam, Marlies L van Bekkum, Bert A Bonsing, Hendrik Bos, Koop P Bosscha, Stefan A W Bouwense, Lieke Brouwer-Hol, Anna M E Bruynzeel, Olivier R Busch, Peter-Paul L O Coene, Casper H J van Eijck, Jan Willem B de Groot, Brigitte C M Haberkorn, Ignace H J T de Hingh, Tom M Karsten, Geert Kazemier, Marion B van der Kolk, Mike S L Liem, Olaf J L Loosveld, Saskia A C Luelmo, Misha D P Luyer, Leonie J M Mekenkamp, J Sven D Mieog, Vincent B Nieuwenhuijs, Joost J M E Nuyttens, Gijs A Patijn, Hjalmar C van Santvoort, Martijn W J Stommel, Eva Versteijne, Judith de Vos-Geelen, Roeland F de Wilde, Babs M Zonderhuis, Bronno van der Holt, Marjolein Y V Homs, Geertjan van Tienhoven, Marc G Besselink, Johanna W Wilmink, Bas Groot Koerkamp
Read the Full Article on The Lancet Oncology
9. The PANORAMA study from USA and Europe showed the added value of AI for detection of Pancreatic Cancer from routine CT scans.
The publicly available dataset of scans is a valuable resource for testing algorithms.
Title: Artificial intelligence and radiologists in pancreatic cancer detection using standard of care CT scans (PANORAMA): an international, paired, non-inferiority, confirmatory, observational study
Authors: Natalia Alves, Megan Schuurmans, Dawid Rutkowski, Anindo Saha, Pierpaolo Vendittelli, Nancy Obuchowski, Marjolein H Liedenbaum, Ingfrid S Haldorsen, Anders Molven, Derya Yakar, Jeroen Geerdink, Sebastiaan van Koeverden, Deniece M Riviere, Wulphert Venderink, Robbert de Haas, Namkug Kim, J-Matthias Löhr, Garima Suman, Klaus H Maier-Hein, Horst K Hahn, Weichung Wang, Alan L Yuille, Avinash Kambadakone, Elliot K Fishman, Caroline Verbeke, Geert Litjens, John J Hermans, Henkjan Huisman
Read the Full Article on The Lancet Oncology
10. There were many excellent preclinical studies of allele agnostic and G12D targeted KRAS inhibitors in 2025, as a prelude to late phase clinical data expected next year. The immune system remains pivotal in augmenting KRASi responses.
Title: T-cell Dependency of Tumor Regressions and Complete Responses with RAS(ON) Multi-selective Inhibition in Preclinical Models of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma
Authors: Margo Orlen, William P. Vostrejs, Rina Sor, Jayne C. McDevitt, Samantha B. Kemp, Il-Kyu Kim, Adam B. Kramer, Nataliya Tovbis Shifrin, Nune Markosyan, Cynthia Clendenin, Mallika Singh, Elsa Quintana, Marie Menard, Robert H. Vonderheide, Ben Z. Stanger
Read the Full Article on Cancer Discovery
11. Ending with this review by David Tuveson aptly titled ‘Roadmap to Defeat Pancreatic Cancer’, summarizing the hallmarks of this disease and where some of the greatest unmet needs are in research.
Looking forward to many amazing stories in 2026!”
Title: Road Map to Defeat Pancreatic Cancer
Authors: L. Paige Ferguson, David A. Tuveson
Read the Full Article on ANNUAL REVIEW OF CANCER BIOLOGY
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