Jurgis Alvikas, MD
Platelet RNA signatures for early detection of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is aggressive, with poor prognosis and rising incidence — projected to be the second leading cause of cancer death in the US by 2030. The only chance at long-term survival is surgical resection, but only around 15% of cases are operable at diagnosis. This project hypothesises that a circulating platelet RNA signature can distinguish patients with PDAC from those with benign pancreatic disease and from healthy volunteers. Platelets carry a complex, dynamic repertoire of coding and non-coding RNA that responds to stimuli, and recent studies have shown significant transcriptomic and proteomic changes in circulating platelets in PDAC — but those were single-institution studies too small to translate into a clinical tool.
This pilot will identify the coding and non-coding platelet RNA signatures that mark PDAC, serving as the foundation for a larger prospective study to validate them — with the goal of finding pancreatic cancer at an earlier, more treatable stage.
Dr. Alvikas was born in Trakai, Lithuania and emigrated to the United States as a teenager. After high school in the Chicago Public School system he took his undergraduate degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and attended medical school at the University of Illinois at Chicago, then a general surgery residency at UPMC, where he is now a Fellow in Complex General Surgical Oncology. The motivation for his work is personal: his mother’s breast cancer diagnosis sparked his interest in medicine, and his grandmother was diagnosed with and died from pancreatic cancer in 2022. Witnessing that as a family member rather than a clinician sharpened his sense of urgency. He works under the mentorship of Dr. Randall Brand, an expert in pancreatic cancer diagnostics.
Seed grants start at $50,000 — awarded by scientists, reported on annually.
Donate →Jurgis Alvikas, MD
Platelet RNA signatures for early detection of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is aggressive, with poor prognosis and rising incidence — projected to be the second leading cause of cancer death in the US by 2030. The only chance at long-term survival is surgical resection, but only around 15% of cases are operable at diagnosis. This project hypothesises that a circulating platelet RNA signature can distinguish patients with PDAC from those with benign pancreatic disease and from healthy volunteers. Platelets carry a complex, dynamic repertoire of coding and non-coding RNA that responds to stimuli, and recent studies have shown significant transcriptomic and proteomic changes in circulating platelets in PDAC — but those were single-institution studies too small to translate into a clinical tool.
This pilot will identify the coding and non-coding platelet RNA signatures that mark PDAC, serving as the foundation for a larger prospective study to validate them — with the goal of finding pancreatic cancer at an earlier, more treatable stage.
Dr. Alvikas was born in Trakai, Lithuania and emigrated to the United States as a teenager. After high school in the Chicago Public School system he took his undergraduate degree at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and attended medical school at the University of Illinois at Chicago, then a general surgery residency at UPMC, where he is now a Fellow in Complex General Surgical Oncology. The motivation for his work is personal: his mother’s breast cancer diagnosis sparked his interest in medicine, and his grandmother was diagnosed with and died from pancreatic cancer in 2022. Witnessing that as a family member rather than a clinician sharpened his sense of urgency. He works under the mentorship of Dr. Randall Brand, an expert in pancreatic cancer diagnostics.
Seed grants start at $50,000 — awarded by scientists, reported on annually.
Donate →