Barts Cancer Institute research receives prize for Research Excellence in Pathology

Each year, The Journal of Pathology awards the Jeremy Jass Prize for Research Excellence to the paper published in the previous calendar year that they believe to be of the highest scientific calibre.

Congratulations to Barts Cancer Institute (BCI)’s Professor Hemant Kocher, who is co-lead author of the paper selected for the Jeremy Jass Prize for the calendar year 2019. In the study, the research team took a detailed look at scar tissue in human pancreatic cancer. The findings revealed a range of different scar tissue types present in pancreatic cancer tumours, which could help clinicians to predict which patients will respond best to particular treatments.

Co-lead researcher of the study is Dr Anguraj Sadanandam from The Institute of Cancer Research, London and first author of the paper is Dr Cindy Neuzillet from the Curie Institute, Paris who was a PhD student at BCI at the time of the publication.

Speaking of the research, Professor Kocher said:

"Pancreatic cancer is characterised by intense fibrosis or scar tissue. In this work, we have made an exciting discovery about the differences in fibroblasts - cells that lay down the scar tissue - in pancreatic cancer. So far, it has been thought that all fibroblasts in pancreatic cancer are the same. We demonstrate that within a patient, there are different types of fibroblasts and they perform different tasks to help or restrain cancer growth. The proportion of these fibroblasts is also different between various patients. This aspect explains the impact that fibroblasts may have on the outcome for patients."

"We are hoping that this discovery will lead to new diagnostic modalities and therapies for patients with pancreatic cancer."

The research was a collaboration between scientists at BCI, Queen Mary University of London, and The Institute of Cancer Research (ICR), along with collaborators from Paris and Toulouse in France; Halle, Germany; Istanbul, Turkey and Sydney, Australia. You can find out more about the research in this news item.

About the Jeremy Jass Prize

The Jeremy Jass Prize for Research Excellence in Pathology is an annual prize awarded to authors of a research paper published in the The Journal of Pathology that is deemed to be the best published in a calendar year based on scientific excellence, novelty and importance. The prize is awarded in memory of the late Professor Jeremy Jass, a renowned scientist and gastrointestinal pathologist, and recognises and commemorates the enormous contribution that he made to pathological research.

The prize is awarded one year in arrears and judged by the Editorial team of The Journal of Pathology. The first prize was awarded in 2010 for a paper that had been published in the calendar year of 2008.

Congratulations to all of the authors of the 2019 Jeremy Jass Prize award-winning paper, listed below.

Research paper:

Cindy Neuzillet*, Annemilaï Tijeras‐Raballand, Chanthirika Ragulan, Jérôme Cros, Yatish Patil, Matthieu Martinet, Mert Erkan, Jörg Kleeff, Jeremy Wilson, Minoti Apte, Marie Tosolini, Abigail S Wilson, Francesca R Delvecchio, Corinne Bousquet, Valérie Paradis, Pascal Hammel, Anguraj Sadanandam* and Hemant M Kocher*. Inter‐ and intra‐tumoural heterogeneity in cancer‐associated fibroblasts of human pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. J Pathol 2019; 248: 51-56. DOI: 10.1002/path.5224

*Co‐corresponding authors