UToledo Researcher Receives Ohio Cancer Research Grant to Study Pancreatic Cancer’s Resistance to Treatment

UToledo Researcher Receives Ohio Cancer Research Grant to Study Pancreatic Cancer's Resistance to Treatment

Pancreatic cancer remains one of the deadliest cancers in the United States, with limited treatment options and a high rate of therapeutic resistance. A University of Toledo scientist is working to change that trajectory.

Dr. Kuo-Hui Su, assistant professor in the Department of Cell and Cancer Biology, has been awarded a two-year, $80,000 grant from Ohio Cancer Research to investigate a potential new approach to treating pancreatic cancer - one that targets the disease's ability to resist the treatments designed to fight it.

"Pancreatic cancer remains one of the most difficult cancers to treat because tumor cells are highly adaptable and can become resistant to therapy," Su said. " Our goal is to understand the mechanisms that allow these cancer cells to survive and identify new vulnerabilities that can be therapeutically targeted."

Su's research focuses on a protein called Heat Shock Factor 1, or HSF1, a molecular stress responder that helps cells survive under pressure. Over the past five years, Su's lab has investigated HSF1 in pancreatic cancer cells, building evidence for its role in cellular stress adaptation, metabolism and treatment resistance. Now, the new grant will allow his team to pursue a promising new angle: the connection between HSF1 and fatty acid metabolism in pancreatic cancer cells.

"We found that HSF1 is not only involved in the protein stress response but also helps regulate metabolism," Su said. "With this grant, we are investigating how HSF1 regulates fatty acid oxidation and whether disrupting this HSF1-metabolic axis can create a therapeutic vulnerability in pancreatic cancer."

If HSF1 can be blocked or targeted directly, it could provide another way to treat pancreatic cancer, alongside existing approaches that target cancer-driving genes such as KRAS, which commonly mutate in pancreatic cancer HSF1 could offer a complementary treatment strategy.

Ohio Cancer Research provides early funding to help researchers generate the data needed to move this work forward. Su's award builds on years of research and could provide important early results needed to pursue larger federal grants and future studies.

Dr. Su's work is also supported by the infrastructure of The Northwest Ohio Cancer Research Institute, launched earlier this year at UToledo. It provides shared resources including disease-based programs and service cores, as well as a collaborative environment that connects basic, translational and clinical cancer research.

Su joined UToledo's Department of Cell and Cancer Biology in 2021 following postdoctoral training at the National Cancer Institute. He is also an American Cancer Society-funded researcher, with a four-year grant supporting his investigation of HSF1's role in autophagy, the process by which cells break down and recycle their own components, in pancreatic cancer.

Su will conduct the research with co-investigators Dr. Shi-He Liu of the Department of Cell and Cancer Biology and Dr. Charles Thodeti of the Department of Physiology and Pharmacology. Dr. Andrea Kalinoski, director of Integrated Core Facilities at UToledo, will serve as a collaborator on the project.