CRIG Partnership grant

 In 2025, CRIG launched the second call for ‘partnership grants’ for duos consisting of a fundamental/translational researcher & a health care professional to initiate innovative cancer research projects. The main purpose of these partnership grants is to stimulate the interaction between the lab and the clinic, to create leverage by stimulating and increasing the success rate of future larger project applications, and to maximize chances to build further on the project.

We are proud to announce that Prof. Kathleen Claes and Prof. Karen Geboes have been awarded this grant for their project “BIOPANC: Unlocking Molecular Clues for Early Pancreatic Cancer Detection”. ​In this proof-of-concept study, they will collect pancreatic juice and blood from patients undergoing endoscopic ultrasound and analyze the cfDNA derived from these samples using advanced genetic and epigenetic techniques to detect tumor-derived signals. By comparing PJ-based markers with standard tests such as CA19-9, they aim to identify more sensitive tools for early detection and better risk stratification.