Dr Rute Ferreira is a Pancreatic Cancer UK (PCUK) Fellow with over a decade of experience in pancreatic cancer biology. She completed her PhD at the London Research Institute, under Professor Axel Behrens, studying cell-intrinsic plasticity and the tumour cell heterogeneity that sustains cancer growth. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Tumour–Host Interaction laboratory of Dr Ilaria Malanchi at the Francis Crick Institute. Rute postdoctoral research expanded her interest to explore how the tumour microenvironment regulates this plasticity, with a particular focus on early tumourigenesis. Her current work investigates how disturbances in tissue homeostasis and microenvironmental signals, including those originating from the peripheral nervous system, influence pancreatic tumour susceptibility. This research has important implications for early detection and cancer prevention, and represents a line of investigation Rute is developing into an independent research programme