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New discovery looks to aid in pancreatic cancer fight

By Tara Rack-Amber trackamber@heraldstandard.Com 4 min read
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A new discovery was made recently that could affect the treatment and prognosis for those diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

Noted as one of the deadliest cancers, those newly diagnosed have 7.2 percent survival rate five years after diagnosis.

“It (pancreatic cancer) tends to be fairly aggressive, and it tends to develop silently. If you do surgery, even on people who have early stage (cancer), after they recover from surgery they often relapse because it’s spread,” said Dr. Andrew J. Zahalsky, the director of medical oncology at Monongahela Valley Hospital.

An additional reason for the low survival rate is because once the cancer is discovered it has already progressed to a later stage.

“They are thinking this cancer might make the second deadliest cancer in 2020,” said Donna Hager of Uniontown who is an advocate for the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. “Normally people by the time they discover they have it, there is no hope because it has spread.”

Dr. Raghu Kalluri of the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center recently found that people who were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer carried more of a particular protein known as glypican-1, than those who did not have cancer. The more glypican-1, the more their cancer had progressed.

“What they have found is when normal pancreas releases its cells they do not have that protein on them. When it buds off, the cells seem to have more glypican-1 than normal cells do,” said Zahalsky. “They (the study) took 250 people that had pancreatic cancer and tested them and 100 percent had the glypican-1, and they took those that had pancreatitis (an inflammation of the pancreas) and they had none of them.”

Zahalsky said that while this study is yielding very promising results, he feels there still needs to be significant studying done before a test can be developed and available to patients.

“The other caveat is they also tested breast cancer patients and 75 percent of the breast cancer cells also seemed to have glypican-1. Which in one way is good as a test because it looks like something that starts to show up when cancer is developing. The whole goal is supposed to find it before it spreads,” he said. “If you have a test that you can catch it early, it will work wonders for the progression of people with cancer. I think this overall is a very integral result they found. It has a lot of potential for future development. They need to find out where it fits and make sure that we are detecting pancreatic cancer. If it does pan out I think it will be an improvement in our field.”

Currently, the only option for a person diagnosed with pancreatic cancer is extensive surgery.

“If it appears to be localized to the pancreas the treatment is surgery. It is a Whipple procedure that removes the pancreas, a portion of the small intestine, a portion of the gallbladder. It is a fairly extensive long operation, if they can remove the entire pancreas. Some people, depending on the findings of the surgery will receive additional chemo, if there was some microscopic (cancer) left,” said Zahalsky. “If it has already spread into the liver or has invaded the superior mesenteric artery (an abdominal artery) the treatment is pretty much palliative chemo therapy; shrink it and make you live longer. It makes you live longer, but it is not curative. The only curative treatment is surgery and that is the only option if you catch it early.”

While the jury is still out on this new test and more research needs to be conducted, Hager is hopeful.

“I am fighting. I don’t just want to see that hopelessness,” she said. “We need more funding for more scientists because we need more research and an earlier detection method has to be found.”

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