Damon Runyon Researchers

Pancreatic cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related deaths. The development of drugs targeting mutant KRAS, the oncogenic driver of most pancreatic cancers, has led to much optimism for improved treatments. However, tumor recurrence driven by heterogeneous cancer cell responses to these drugs remains a major challenge. Some cancer cells die, while surviving cells can halt their proliferation or continue to proliferate in the presence of drug, all of which can occur within the same tumor and dictate the overall response to treatment. Dr. Ratnayeke [HHMI Fellow] is studying the mechanisms that underlie these heterogeneous responses using mouse models of pancreatic cancer and single-cell genomics to map cellular states to their drug responses. Understanding these mechanisms will inform combination and precision therapies with mutant KRAS-targeting drugs to tune tumor responses in beneficial directions. Dr. Ratnayeke received his PhD from Stanford University, Stanford and his BS from the University of Texas at Austin, Austin.