Christine Chio Awarded Mark Foundation Emerging Leader Award for Innovative Pancreatic Cancer Research
Christine Chio, PhD, a member of the Tumor Biology and Microenvironment program at the Herbert Irving Comprehensive Cancer Center has been named a 2026 Emerging Leader Award recipient by the Mark Foundation for Cancer Research. The highly competitive award supports early-career investigators pursuing bold, high-risk, high-reward research with the potential to transform cancer diagnosis and treatment. Chio will receive $250,000 over three years to support her project “Systemic Iron Remodeling as an Early Indicator of Pancreatic Cancer Progression,” which aims to uncover new, non-invasive ways to detect pancreatic cancer at its earliest and most treatable stages.
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) remains one of the deadliest cancers, with most patients diagnosed only after the disease has spread. Current screening or surveillance strategies for people at high risk, including advanced imaging and blood-based tumor markers, often fail to detect the earliest precancerous changes. Chio’s research takes a fundamentally different approach: instead of searching for tumor-intrinsic signals, her work examines how early pancreatic tumors reprogram the body’s metabolism, well before a tumor is clinically apparent or detectable by current known biomarkers.
Building on her prior work in cancer cachexia—a wasting condition that affects ~85% with pancreatic cancer—Chio has found that pancreatic tumors trigger changes throughout the body much earlier than previously recognized. Her research shows that long before patients develop symptoms or receive a diagnosis, pancreatic cancer can cause fat tissue to shrink and lose its normal function, called ‘adipose atrophy.’ They further discovered that pancreatic cancer alters where iron is stored and used, leading to its accumulation in adipose tissue and subsequently, adipose atrophy. These early, systemic changes could provide a new and much earlier window into pancreatic cancer development, and ultimately earlier detection and diagnosis.
With support from the Mark Foundation, Chio’s team will map when and where iron remodeling occurs during pancreatic cancer development, identify the molecular pathways linking iron accumulation to adipose dysfunction, and test whether these changes can be detected using standard imaging approaches such as MRI. Together, these studies aim to lay the groundwork for earlier diagnosis and intervention—when emerging targeted therapies may be most effective.
Chio is an assistant professor of genetics and development (in the Institute for Cancer Genetics) at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons. Her broader research program explores how tumors communicate with distant organs to drive systemic metabolic dysfunction, with a particular focus on pancreatic cancer and cancer-associated cachexia. By integrating mechanistic biology, advanced imaging, and translational human studies, her work seeks to reveal vulnerabilities that can be utilized for both early detection and therapeutic intervention.
