Approved research

Pancreatic Disease Haplotype Association Studies

Lay summary

Our DNA encodes all of the information that makes us into a living breathing human being. Therefore there must be information on how some of the most common and complicated diseases we are afflicted with arise from our DNA. By sequencing small regions of a patient's genome and building software to interpret those results Ariel Precision Medicine is able to help doctors to determine the changes in the DNA that contributed to that person's disease. Specifically we are focused on diseases of the pancreas like acute pancreatitis, chronic pancreatitis, diabetes, and pancreatic cancer. It is often the case that a patient starts with acute pancreatitis and it is misdiagnosed, or is diagnosed properly, but not treated as a serious condition until it develops into chronic pancreatitis, diabetes, and or cancer. When this happens both the patients quality of life and lifespan are reduced. We are only just beginning to understand more about the way changes to the DNA sequence influence the progression of these diseases. Using UK Biobank data from patients with these diseases we hope to predict these diseases before irreversible organ damage. This will allow the patient's doctor to prescribe appropriate medications and lifestyle changes to enable the patient to live longer and have an overall better quality of life.