Dr. Garrido-Laguna’s primary research interest is pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Since Dr. Garrido-Laguna arrival at HCI in 2011, accrual of PDAC patients to clinical trials has increased from less than 5% in 2011 to consistently 15%. He is PI of multiple clinical trials including novel therapies such as immunotherapies that hold promise in the treatment of this disease. His research team work in drug development in pancreatic cancer is focused on five different areas. They coined the PRIME acronym to refer to these areas (Nevala-Plagemann Nat Rev Clin Oncol 2020). P for Pathway inhibitors, R for DNA Repair agents, I for Immunotherapy, M for drugs targeting cancer metabolism and E for drugs targeting the extracellular matrix. At HCI, patients with pancreatic cancer can participate in clinical trials targeting each of these pancreatic cancer vulnerabilities. In 2018, his team and collaborators reported exceptional responses to entrectinib among patients with advanced pancreatic cancer whose tumors harbored NTRK/ROS1 fusions (Pishvaian et al JCO Precision Oncology 2018). This work was part of an early phase trial that led to FDA approval of entrectinib in patients with solid tumors with NTRK fusions (Doebele et. al Lancet Oncology 2020). In addition, this data contributed to the inclusion of NTRK testing in the recently published ASCO guidelines for metastatic pancreatic cancer (Sohal et al. JCO 2020). While NTRK fusions are very rare events in PDAC (<0.5%), genetic testing to them may render new treatment opportunities for a subset of patients with this recalcitrant disease. In addition, translational work at Huntsman Cancer institute from Aria Vaishnavi (Martin McMahon lab) recently demonstrated that TPR-NTRK fusions were oncogenic in PDAC. More importantly, vertical inhibition of NTRK pathway with entrectinib plus cobimetinib led to sustained inhibition of the pathway and durable responses in xenografts (Vaishnavi et. al Cell Reports 2020).