New way to stop pancreatic cancer in early stages discovered

WASHINGTON - Scientists at the University of Oklahoma have found a novel way to stop early stage pancreatic cancer.

C.V. Rao, and his team were able to show for the first time that a drug used in current chemotherapy for later stages of pancreatic cancer had a dramatic effect if used earlier.

With low doses of Gefitinib, which has no known side effects at this level, scientists were able to not only stop pancreatic cancer tumors from growing, but after 41 weeks of treatment, the cancer was gone.

The Oklahoma team said the finding points to an effective way to stop pancreatic cancer before it reaches later stages of development where the survival rate drops below 6 percent.

Gefitinib works by targeting signals of a gene that is among the first to mutate when pancreatic cancer is present. By targeting the signal for tumor growth expressed by the mutated gene, researchers were able to stop the cancer’s procession.

“This gene is the key in 95 percent of cases of pancreatic cancer. It is our best target. By targeting this gene, we can activate or inactivate several other genes and processes down the line,” Rao said.

The study was published in the latest issue of Cancer Prevention Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research. (ANI)