Dr. Cindy Leiton, a senior postdoctoral trainee in the lab of Drs. Kenneth Shroyer and Luisa Escobar-Hoyos has been awarded the National Pancreas Foundation Research Grant to support her research that is focused on the Therapeutic Targeting of the Most Aggressive Molecular Subtype of Pancreatic Cancer. This award recognizes young talent that hold promise as the next leaders of pancreatic disease research. Cindy's application was one of three cancer research proposals that were selected from a national pool of 60 applications.
Dr. Leiton seeks to develop novel therapeutic strategies to target Keratin 17, a negative prognostic biomarker that identifies the most lethal form of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and is a potential drug target. The project will leverage the developing patient-derived tissue libraries housed in the SBU Biobank (in collaboration with Dr. Richard Kew), and brings together a collaborative team of experts in drug development (with Dr. Nashaat Turkman, Department of Radiology and Dr. Iwao Ojima, Department of Chemistry), and Dr. Asfar Azmi, who has a lead role in an on-going clinical trial at the Karmanos Cancer Center of Wayne State University.
