Pancreatic cancer is usually not detected in its early stages which is why pancreatic cancer has the highest mortality rate of all major cancers. It is the 3rd leading cause of cancer-related death in the U.S. According to cancer.org, pancreatic cancer is hard to find early. The pancreas is deep inside the body, so early tumors can’t be seen or felt by health care providers during routine physical exams. People usually have no symptoms until the cancer has become very large or has already spread to other organs.
For certain types of cancer, screening tests or exams are used to look for cancer in people who have no symptoms (and who have not had that cancer before). But for pancreatic cancer, no major professional groups currently recommend routine screening in people who are at average risk. This is because no screening test has been shown to lower the risk of dying from this cancer.
One spot of good news has been published in the June 2nd edition of the New England Journal of Medicine. A patient with progressive metastatic pancreatic cancer was treated with a single infusion of 16.2×109 autologous T cells that had been genetically engineered to clonally express two allogeneic HLA-C*08:02–restricted T-cell receptors (TCRs) targeting mutant KRAS G12D expressed by the tumors.
The patient had metastatic pancreatic cancer and she had a 72% partial response with T-cell receptor gene therapy. More testing and more studies will determine if the future treatment of pancreatic cancer is hopeful based on these results and future tests. But it is a great start and many people in the medical community are intrigued by the results.
For more information visit nejm.org
The New England Journal of Medicine
Cancer.org