Approved Research

Deciphering the complex relationship between asthma/allergy and pancreatic cancer risk

Lay summary

Asthma and allergies are very common diseases in the population that begin during childhood. Suffering from asthma has been associated with a reduced risk of some cancers, including pancreatic cancer. This is one of the most aggressive tumors, which is increasing in frequency in our environment and for which there is no effective treatment because patients are diagnosed too late. Therefore, it is essential to diagnose pancreatic cancer at earlier stages. With this project we want to study whether asthma and allergies are causally associated with pancreatic cancer, as well as the role of other diseases, e.g. obesity, exposures such as smoking, and also whether the treatment of asthma and allergies affect this association. In addition, we will want to investigate how local inflammation in the pancreas and systemic inflammation combine to develop pancreatic cancer, or one of its subtypes. To dissect this puzzle, we will apply a unique combination of epidemiological methods, tools and resources, a large number of biomarkers, data science and advanced computational methods, as well as the proven expertise of researchers from different disciplines.

The identification of the asthma endotype that confers protection to the development of specific subtypes of pancreatic cancer will provide the clues to further investigate the cellular/molecular mechanisms associated with this type of asthma and to find immunological strategies to prevent pancreatic cancer. If the results show that drugs used in the treatment of asthma protect against the development of pancreatic cancer, their use could be considered for the prevention of this cancer in high-risk patients (e.g. patients with a family history or with late-diagnosed diabetes). If these drugs have a poor toxicity profile, it will be necessary to determine through which mechanisms they exert this action in order to identify others that may be more selective and can be used in the clinical setting. In case of identifying peripheral blood markers associated with a protective or risky immunological environment at the tumor level, it will be possible to use them to monitor patients with a patients with an increased risk of developing pancreatic cancer.