Srivatsan Raghavan, MD, PhD

Pancreatic cancer is a highly lethal disease with relatively few treatment options. A new class of inhibitors that target the KRAS gene, which is altered in approximately 90% of pancreatic cancer patients, are showing great promise in the clinical setting as a new therapeutic option for these patients. However, nearly all patients develop resistance and experience tumor regrowth after a relatively short period of treatment with these drugs. Dr. Raghavan aims to investigate how cancer cells adapt and become resistant to these KRAS inhibitors and develop combination therapies to overcome this resistance. He anticipates that these studies will uncover fundamental mechanistic insights into cancer drug resistance and identify novel therapeutic strategies that will improve outcomes for patients with pancreatic cancer.