Pancreatic cancer is a very challenging disease. It’s tough to catch early,
spreads rapidly, and doesn’t respond easily to treatment.
This year, pancreatic cancer is expected to be the 12th most common cancer,
but the
National Cancer Institute (NCI)
predicts it will cause the third highest number of cancer deaths. By 2030,
it’s
projected to become the second leading cause of cancer deaths
in the U.S. This is because pancreatic cancer is often found too late for
effective treatment.
But there is hope on the horizon. Researchers seem to be making progress in
improving treatments for this aggressive disease. Here’s what you need to
know about pancreatic cancer, its treatments, and the promising
breakthroughs in the works.
Pancreatic cancer basics
The
pancreas
is a large gland in the back of the abdomen. It has two functions: Making
enzymes that help digest food and producing hormones that control the amount
of sugar in the bloodstream.
Because the pancreas is located behind other organs, it’s hard for doctors
to detect tumors there during routine exams. To make matters worse,
pancreatic cancer
often doesn’t cause symptoms until it’s spread beyond the pancreas. As a
result,
survival rates are currently low. However, recent advances in pancreatic cancer detection are offering hope,
with
new techniques
and
technologies
aiming to identify the disease earlier, when treatment may be more
effective.
Treatment options
For now, surgery is
a major treatment strategy
for pancreatic cancer, but it’s only an option in about 20 percent of cases.
There are four types of pancreatic cancer based on how it can be treated
with surgery:
- Resectable: The tumor is confined to the pancreas and can
be completely removed. - Borderline resectable: The tumor has spread to nearby blood
vessels but can still be removed. - Locally advanced: The tumor has spread more deeply into
nearby blood vessels, making surgery challenging. - Metastatic: The cancer has spread to distant organs such as
the lungs or liver, making it impossible to remove all of it by surgery.
Other
pancreatic cancer treatments
include:
• Chemotherapy, which uses drugs to kill cancer cells. It
also kills normal cells, resulting in negative side effects.• Radiation therapy, which uses powerful energy beams aimed
at cancer cells to minimize damage to healthy cells.• Immunotherapy, which uses medicines to help the immune
system find and kill cancer cells.• Targeted therapy, which targets pancreatic cancer cells to
stop their growth.
Doctors may use these treatments individually or together to shrink a tumor
before surgery, kill any cancer cells left after surgery, or to ease
symptoms when surgery isn’t an option.
Promising advances in treatment
Pancreatic cancer research covers everything from studies focused on
understanding the disease better to clinical trials testing new treatments
that could soon be widely used.
Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, are
developing a drug
that targets a genetic mutation responsible for nearly half of all
pancreatic cancer cases. Clinical trials could start within a couple of
years.
In another promising study,
researchers found that a new drug, BXCL701, makes pancreatic cancer
cells more receptive to immunotherapy. This drug is currently being tested in combination with an existing
immunotherapy treatment in clinical trials and has shown encouraging
results.
There’s also a
national clinical trial
testing the effectiveness of a new chemotherapy delivery method. Pancreatic
tumors are surrounded by scar tissue that makes it hard for drugs to reach
the cancer. This new method aims to break through that barrier of scar
tissue and deliver chemotherapy directly to the tumor.
One
recent DNA discovery
involves the gene HNF4A, which helps organs function. Pancreatic cancer
cells appear to disable this gene, allowing them to grow rapidly. While this
knowledge won’t bring immediate changes in treatment, it could lead to a
targeted therapy for the disease in the future.
Reasons for hope
Pancreatic cancer has long been one of the deadliest forms of cancer, with
treatment advances coming at a frustratingly slow pace. But thanks to new
discoveries and cutting-edge research, that pace is picking up. If some of
these new treatments prove as effective as they seem, the outlook for people
facing pancreatic cancer could improve dramatically in the years to come.
