Ben Z. Stanger

Cellular Plasticity Pancreatic Cancer Tumor Immunology Metastasis Key words: Pancreatic Cancer, Tumor Immunology, Cell Plasticity Description of Research Pancreas Cancer Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is poised to become the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States. This poor outcome is attributable to two facts: (1) pancreatic cancers metastasize early, before clinical detection, and (2) current anti-cancer therapies are inadequate. Our laboratory tackles these problems by understanding how tumors evolve and identifying vulnerabilities that will lead to better therapies. Our efforts include studies of the tumor microenvironment (with a focus on immune cells), metabolism, cellular plasticity and metastasis biology. We rely on genetically engineered mice that recapitulate salient features of the human disease, functional genomics, epigenetics, and human samples.

Than MT, Stanger BZ: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma: the Everest of cancer biology. J Clin Invest 135(14): e191936, Jul 2025. Orlen MI, Vostrejs WP, Sor R, McDevitt JC, Kemp SB, Kim IK, Kramer AB, Tovbis Shifrin N, Markosyan N, Clendenin C, Singh M, Quintana E, Menard M, Vonderheide RH, Stanger BZ: T-cell dependency of tumor regressions and complete responses with RAS(ON) multi-selective inhibition in preclinical models of PDAC. Cancer Discov 15(8): 1697-1716, Aug 2025. Kahn BM, Ng RWS, Kim IK, Eskandarian C, Chen CO, Huang B, Lucas A, Li L, Maillard I, Stanger BZ: Intrinsic properties of the lymph node render it immunologically susceptible to metastasis. Cancer Discov 15(9): 1949-1968, Sep 2025. Katsuda T, Sussman JH, Ito K, Katznelson A, Yuan S, Takenaka N, Li J, Merrell AJ, Cure H,