FFBW Partnership with Dr. Tatiana Hurtado & UCSD/ Pancreatic Cancer Research

The Foundation For A Better World is very pleased to announce our partnership with Dr. Tatiana Hurtado de Mendoza at UCSD to fund her research in pancreatic cancer. The three-year project will fund Dr. Hurtado’s innovative and novel approach to enabling immunotherapies for solid tumors such as pancreatic cancer. 

Pancreatic cancer has a low mutational burden and a very immunosuppressive microenvironment, rendering it resistant to immunotherapies which have been transformational for treating many other types of cancer. Dr. Hurtado’s goal is to elicit an antitumor immune response in pancreatic tumors by delivering neoantigens followed by adoptive T cell transfer. Her team will also attempt to redirect pre-existing adaptive immune responses to eradicate endogenous tumors. This project encompasses studies using flow cytometry as well as mouse models of pancreatic cancer. 

Pancreatic cancer is the third most-common cause of death from cancer in the United States and has an extremely poor prognosis. After diagnosis, 25% of people survive one year and only 5% live for five years. We are thrilled to be working with Dr. Hurtado and UCSD on this novel approach to enabling new treatments and better outcomes for patients suffering from pancreatic cancer.