Research by Dafna Bar-Sagi, PhD, a member of NYU Langone Health’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, has contributed to the understanding of how pancreatic cancer tumor cells grow and cause disease. At the recent American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Special Conference on Pancreatic Cancer, Dr. Bar-Sagi, the Saul J. Farber Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology and professor in the Department of Medicine at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, discussed her research on the interaction of pancreatic cancer cells and the immune system.

“Tumors have properties of an ecosystem, in which the fitness of the neoplastic cells is continuously shaped and optimized by the interactions with its environment,” Dr. Bar-Sagi, also executive vice president and vice dean for science and chief scientific officer at NYU Langone, tells Cancer Research Catalyst, the AACR’s official blog. “This environment operates at different scales, with each scale providing different contextual determinants that can be dynamically modified by cross-scale interactions.”

Read more from Cancer Research Catalyst.