Janel Kopp recently joined the University of British Columbia as an assistant professor in the Department of Cellular & Physiological Sciences and an associate member of the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine.
Dr. Kopp’s research focuses on the cellular origins of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and how these early events during tumor initiation affect the variable responses to chemotherapy observed in patients. Dr. Kopp has expertise in the development of mouse models to examine these questions and she will be collaborating with investigators associated with the Pancreas Centre BC to translate the observations in mouse models to insights affecting the diagnosis and treatment of patients in the future.
These studies have the potential to not only improve our basic understanding of the underlying events creating differences in this cancer, but they will also provide preclinical models to examine differential therapeutic response, identify criteria to stratify tumors into different subtypes, and provide potential biomarkers to identify pancreatic cancer earlier.