Scott Verbridge, associate professor in biomedical engineering and mechanics at Virginia Tech, and Barath Udayasuryan, an alumnus from the Virginia Tech-Wake Forest University School of Biomedical Engineering and Sciences, have discovered a characteristic of a common oral bacterium that relocates to pancreatic cancer tumors which may help guide future therapeutic interventions for treatment.
In a phase II clinical trial, a research team led by Nilofer Azad, professor of oncology and co-leader of the Kimmel Cancer Center’s Cancer Genetics and Epigenetics Program, and Marina Baretti, the Jiasheng Chair in Hepato-Biliary Cancer at the Kimmel Cancer Center, tested the safety and efficacy of the combination of two drugs: an immunotherapy, nivolumab, and an epigenetic drug, entinostat—a histone deacetylase inhibitor.
