Pancreas Translational Tumor Board

The Pancreas Translational Tumor Board uses research data from the Atlas project to improve patient care and direct clinically-relevant research questions.  Clinical and research team members meet once each month to discuss an individual patient. The group goes over clinical and pathological information as well as all translational and basic science assay measurements generated from that patient's own tumor or blood. Meeting attendees include clinicians from surgery, radiology, oncology and pathology, basic scientists from each of the Program Leader labs, other researchers supported by the Brenden-Colson Center, genetic counselors, and often patient advocates. This multi-disciplinary approach allows for new shared perspectives to develop new research questions and patient treatment options. Importantly, these meetings also allow cross-discipline PDAC education for all team members, provide an understanding of what information is helpful to clinicians, and what bottlenecks exist in the multi-parametric interrogation of patient samples.

Pancreas Translational Tumor Board Diagram

During PTTB meetings, we use a database report format to present an overview of the patient's history, summarizing both clinical events and significant research findings. A single plot integrates and interactively displays information such as tumor size, CA 19-9 values, treatments, and specimen collections across the timeline of patient care. Importantly, our database allows us to remove specific patient identifying information, generate randomized patient IDs, and randomly shift dates on a per patient basis, in order to protect the patient's identity. Useful data can still be mined and presented using the randomized IDs and relative time between events. Details about the 'omic and image data for the displayed patient can be examined through a tabbed data browser.