Paul Grippo, a research associate in the Department of Surgery at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, received a $100,000 one-year grant to research pancreatic cancer.

Grippo is working on a treatment for pancreatic cancer, a disease that kills more than 30,000 people annually, according to the American Cancer Society Web site.

Grippo received the grant from the Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research in January. He has genetically altered rodents to possess human genes, so they have a cellular environment similar to humans with pancreatic cancer. With this model researchers can test remedies for the disease, including a possible vaccination.

“Pancreatic cancer is a morbid disease,” Grippo said. “About 30,000 people a year are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. It usually is diagnosed late. Symptoms would be things like back pain, jaundice and maybe abdominal cramping.”

By the time the pain becomes severe enough to seek medical attention, the disease has already progressed to later stages for most pancreatic cancer patients. Grippo said almost all patients with this type of cancer die within five years, with an average survival rate of about six to eight months.

Pancreatic cancer is difficult to treat in the later stages, Grippo said, because it metastasizes, a stage in which the disease spreads to different parts of the body and causes tumors.

One of the main goals of Grippo’s project is creating a method of early detection. With a model of early pancreatic cancer stages, like that found in the mice used in Grippo’s study, researchers can make progress in diagnosing the disease earlier.

“Ultimately, I want the mouse model to give us the ability to detect the disease sooner, and then to treat it,” Grippo said.

Although Grippo is creating a cancerous environment within the mice, he says the long term health of the animals is not affected. Although they develop early symptoms of cancer, the mice do not die.

The treatment of the disease is difficult, however, since it involves experimenting with the immune system, which is incredibly complex.

The immune system works by constantly checking to find cell anomalies and then killing them. Grippo said pancreatic cancer’s success as a disease is based on the immune system’s inability to recognize and adequately respond to the cancerous cells.

With pancreatic cancer, the immune system does not attack cancerous cells hard enough to destroy them, Grippo said. Even though the immune system recognizes the cancer, it cannot eliminate the infected cells.

Grippo’s work focuses on helping the immune system to recognize anomalies that alert it to the presence of cancerous cells. The signals of the disease are a mutant Kras and an altered Muchin 1 — two proteins that are commonly altered by the cancer.

Grippo said he hopes to bring new attention to the field of pancreatic cancer research. He aspires to make enough progress to receive a renewal of the grant and continue his work.

Thomas Adrian, the Edward G. Elcock Professor of Surgical Research and director of the Gastrointestinal Oncology Research Center at Feinberg, said Grippo is making great accomplishments in the field of cancer research.

“He is a terrific addition to Northwestern and the team,” Adrian said. “I think he has performed in an outstanding manner. He has been with us for 18 months and has made tremendous progress in developing new models, as well as using the models that he brought with him.”

Grippo’s research will be valuable in finding chemotherapy prevention strategies and detecting the disease in its early stages, Adrian added.