Nina Steele
University of Cincinnati, OH·Medicine & Clinical Research·Early-career
Pancreatic cancer is among the deadliest cancers, with a five-year survival rate of about 13%, and it resists most current therapies. It also affects groups unequally.
- Fields
Medicine & Clinical Research
Genetics
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
pancreatic cancer
pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma
tumor microenvironment
- Grants
- 1 known grant, last ended Aug 2026
What they work on
- Generate single-cell RNA sequencing data, which measure gene activity in individual cells, from pancreatic tumors of 75 Black African American and 75 White patients to expand the diversity of human pancreatic cancer atlases.
- Map where SLIT signaling proteins and their ROBO receptors are expressed across tumor cell types, including pericytes, cancer-associated fibroblasts, endocrine cells and blood vessels, and compare these patterns between racial groups.
- Test whether the loss of SLIT-ROBO signaling, a pathway the team hypothesizes holds back tumor growth, occurs to the same extent in pancreatic cancers from Black African American and White patients.
More about the research
Black African American (BAA) patients are about 20% more likely to develop it and have worse outcomes than White patients. These gaps remain even after accounting for environment, income, health behaviors and other common causes of disparity, which points to possible biological differences. Finding them requires data from diverse patients, but this data is largely missing.
Why it matters
Black African American patients develop pancreatic cancer more often and fare worse than White patients, and the biological reasons are unknown. A more diverse single-cell dataset could reveal tumor differences that underlie this disparity, including differences in SLIT-ROBO signaling. These findings could guide future research toward treatments that work for all patient groups.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Barak Blum
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Physiology
Test the hypothesis that reducing Robo2 receptors in beta cells, the pancreas's insulin-making cells, is essential for islets of Langerhans to expand successfully when insulin demand rises.
Benjamin Allen
University of Michigan, MI·Genetics
Test how loss of Gli1, Gli2 or Gli3 — the transcription factors that execute Hedgehog signaling — individually and in combination affects pancreatic tumor growth, using new pancreatic fibroblast cell lines in co-transplantation assays with tumor cells.
Nicholas Woods
University of Nebraska Medical Center, NE·Medicine & Clinical Research
Test whether Tazemetostat, which blocks the gene-silencing complex PRC2, prevents chemotherapy-induced shifts in tumor subtype, using organoids grown from tumors of Black and White PDAC patients.
The school
University of Cincinnati: 18 labs on PI Pages, $740M a year on research, 275 research doctorates a year.
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