Study looks into potential new treatments for pancreatic cancer

PanARMENIAN.Net - Curtin University researchers have discovered a potential new treatment for an aggressive form of pancreatic cancer, which may have the potential to increase the survival of patients resistant to currently available cancer chemotherapeutic drugs, Medical Xpress reports.

The research, published in the Journal of Experimental and Clinical Cancer Research, found a specialised protein in human pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) cancer cells that is critical for tumour progression. The researchers discovered that treatment with a modified version of an anti-inflammatory drug, called sulindac, could block cancer progression in mouse models with PDAC.

Lead author Professor Marco Falasca, from the Curtin Health Innovation Research Institute and the School of Pharmacy and Biomedical Sciences at Curtin University, said there are currently limited treatments available for people diagnosed with this aggressive type of pancreatic cancer.

"PDAC is a very aggressive disease and people diagnosed only have a five-year survival rate, making it the fourth most common cancer-related cause of death in the western world," Professor Falasca said.

"By using mouse models with PDAC, we were able to show that blocking cancer progression pathways with modified sulindac significantly decreased the spread of PDAC and slowed tumour growth in the body."

Professor Falasca explained that the new findings have potential implications for future human clinical trials, as the protein being studied in this research is also known to cause resistance to currently available cancer chemotherapeutic drugs.

"Overexpression of tumour promoting proteins found in cancers like PDAC is one of the main reasons why chemotherapeutic drugs are ineffective for the treatment of pancreatic cancer. Targeting this protein could be particularly beneficial in treating patients who have failed standard chemotherapy for PDAC," Professor Falasca said.

"Further research is needed to determine whether a possible drug combination, which includes the modified version of sulindac, may also provide promising results in human clinical trials. If successful, then this new treatment has the potential to increase survival for patients with pancreatic cancer."