General Description

This one-year Pilot Project will investigate how pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PanNETs) spread to other organs in the body. Kugel and colleagues have found that a protein called SIRT6 plays a role in metastasis in PanNETs, in pre-clinical models. The investigators hypothesize that loss of SIRT6 may affect metastatic progression in PanNETs. To test this, they will block SIRT6 to see if tumor cells grow faster in its absence, which would suggest that SIRT6 may block metastasis. Their findings could inform the pursuit of targeted therapies, which could help stop the spread of PanNETs.