AACR Highlights: Promise for Treating Pancreatic Cancer

Extract

Pancreatic cancer, one of the deadliest cancers, may lead to new treatments based on biotypes that are common to many cancers, according to Andrew Biankin, MBBS, Ph.D. , head of pancreatic research at the Garvan Institute of Medical Research in Sydney.

“In the current system, the assumption is that cancers are more related to the organ of origin,” Biankin said, adding that using cancer biotypes to target shared genetic mutations across cancers could change treatment for this difficult malignancy. Pancreatic cancer is the fourth-leading cause of cancer death in the United States, and the average 5-year survival rate is less than 4%.

Biankin, part of a panel session called Advances in Pancreatic Cancer at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) annual meeting in Orlando, April 2–6, proposed a pilot study, using sequencing data from the International Genome Consortium, to address the level of evidence required to validate assays in the multimutation approach. His research team is now sequencing 400 tumors taken from patients with advanced disease.