Benjamin Allen
University of Michigan, MI·Genetics
Pancreatic cancer kills most of the people it affects — the five-year survival rate is about 11% — and its incidence is rising, with projections placing it second among causes of cancer death in the United States by 2030. Part of what makes it so hard to treat is that the tumor is not just cancer cells: it is embedded in a dense microenvironment of fibroblasts (connective-tissue support cells) and immune cells that can either restrain or help the tumor.
- Fields
Genetics
Biology
Medicine & Clinical Research
- Topics
pancreatic cancer
pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma
Hedgehog signaling
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Apr 2028
What they work on
- Test how loss of Gli1, Gli2 or Gli3 — the transcription factors that execute Hedgehog signaling — individually and in combination affects pancreatic tumor growth, using new pancreatic fibroblast cell lines in co-transplantation assays with tumor cells.
- Delete Gli genes in living mice using PdgfraCreER and Gli1CreER driver alleles within a new FlpO-driven model of pancreatic cancer progression, to determine how fibroblast GLI activity shapes disease in vivo.
- Determine whether GLI activity in fibroblasts controls fibroblast–immune crosstalk by measuring macrophage and T cell migration, polarization and function in the pancreatic tumor microenvironment.
- Define the direct transcriptional targets of GLI1, GLI2 and GLI3 in pancreatic fibroblasts, in culture and in vivo, in normal pancreas and in tumors, using epitope-tagged knock-in GLI alleles.
More about the research
This work asks how one developmental signaling pathway rewires that microenvironment, and why drugs aimed at it have failed.
Why it matters
Hedgehog pathway inhibitors failed in pancreatic cancer trials, and sometimes made patients worse. Working out which GLI transcription factor does what in tumor fibroblasts, and how those fibroblasts steer macrophages and T cells, could explain those failures and identify more precise targets within the tumor microenvironment — a route toward treatments for a cancer that currently has few effective options.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Kenneth Olive
Columbia University, NY·Pharmacology
Trace how genetic resistance to pan-RAS inhibitors such as RMC-7977 evolves in pancreatic tumors, including MYC copy number gains, using mouse and human models and clinical trial samples, and identify new vulnerabilities it creates.
Nina Steele
University of Cincinnati, OH·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Generate single-cell RNA sequencing data, which measure gene activity in individual cells, from pancreatic tumors of 75 Black African American and 75 White patients to expand the diversity of human pancreatic cancer atlases.
Brittany Allen-Petersen
Purdue University, IN·Biochemistry
Identify how PP2A-B56α, a subunit of a phosphate-removing enzyme, controls the fusion of macropinosomes with lysosomes, focusing on chemical changes made to proteins after they are built.
The school
University of Michigan: 124 labs on PI Pages, $2.1B a year on research, 963 research doctorates a year.
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