Recruiting people newly diagnosed with diabetes
Lead: Professor Christopher Halloran
We are recruiting 2,000 individuals aged 50 years or older who have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes within the last 6 months. Participants kindly provide blood samples, lifestyle and clinical information every six months for two years. We recruit from GP practices, Diabetes Education Centres and NHS centres from across the UK. Around 1% of participants will go on to be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer within three years. The samples and data that are collected from those individuals before their cancer diagnosis could hold crucial clues that allow earlier pancreatic cancer detection in future.
Bio-banking of samples
Lead: Professor William Greenhalf
We collect, process, and store blood samples in the Liverpool Good Clinical Practice laboratories. Following these high standards ensures our research is reliable and meets the needs of future researchers. It also helps us align with similar studies in the United States and the European Union.
Checking if biomarkers can distinguish type3c diabetes from type 2 diabetes
Lead: Professor Eithne Costello
Diabetes caused by pancreatic cancer is known as type 3c diabetes. Right now, there are no simple tests to tell type 3c diabetes apart from the more common type 2 diabetes. Researchers, including us, are working on developing blood tests to make this distinction. The blood samples and data we collect through the UK-EDI programme will be a valuable resource to check if these new tests work. Importantly, because we collect samples before pancreatic cancer is diagnosed, we can detect early changes in the development of pancreatic cancer, which could lead to earlier detection in the future.
Alongside blood samples, participants share some details about their lifestyle and health. We are closely examining all this information to find differences between the 1% who develop pancreatic cancer and the 99% who don't. Working with experts in data modelling, we are developing a risk score for pancreatic cancer to identify which people with new diabetes are at low or high risk. We are taking into consideration end-user need and how modelling can best help healthcare providers.
New biomarker discovery
Lead: Dr Lucy Oldfield
Our research indicates that differences between type-2 and type-3c diabetes can show up as changes in the levels of certain blood proteins. We analysed blood from people with different pancreatic diseases, diabetes (both new and long-standing), and healthy individuals. Using advanced technologies, we measured over 7,500 blood proteins and with help from experts in handling large amounts of data, we found key differences in a small group of proteins that can distinguish type-2 and type-3c diabetes.
Now, we need to test how well this group of proteins works in samples from different labs and in samples taken before pancreatic cancer is diagnosed. The blood samples collected through UK-EDI are taken from participants soon after they are diagnosed with diabetes but before they are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. These samples could provide valuable information on changes that happen months or years before pancreatic cancer is currently diagnosed. Such well-characterized pre-diagnostic samples do not currently exist in the UK, and UK-EDI is creating this unique resource.
Making screening individuals with new-onset diabetes for pancreatic cancer cost-effective.
Lead: Professor Robert van Der Meer
Analysing the costs and benefits is crucial for developing effective screening methods based on biomarkers. It helps decision-makers understand the key factors that make a screening program economically viable and provides useful guidance for future research and development of biomarkers. Our work measures the current costs of diagnosing pancreatic cancer when patients seek help due to symptoms. We then look at how costs would change if the cancer was detected earlier using a type-3c diabetes test, a cancer-specific test or a combination of both types of tests. This research is creating important economic evidence to help develop policies for screening people with new diabetes for pancreatic cancer.
Working with- and involving stakeholders
Lead: Professor Eithne Costello
UK-EDI is raising awareness about the link between new-onset diabetes and pancreatic cancer. We share our research results widely with scientists, doctors, healthcare providers, pharmaceutical companies, and the public. This research is critical, because a new diagnosis of diabetes could be a warning sign of pancreatic cancer. It's crucial to give general practitioners the tools they need to determine if a patient is at high or low risk for pancreatic cancer. UK-EDI is providing the resource to develop these tools and developing them. We are also planning future clinical trials to find ways to detect pancreatic cancer early in people who don't show symptoms but are at high risk.