Pancreatic Cancer

NantKwest and ImmunityBio have partnered on a phase 2 trial to examine the efficacy and safety of a chemoimmunotherapy regimen for treatment of metastatic or locally advanced pancreatic cancer.

Neoadjuvant therapy-induced sarcopenia in patients who underwent neoadjuvant therapy for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma correlated with increased disease recurrence and overall mortality, and reduced overall survival, according to a presentation from Digestive Disease Week.

Regular use of aspirin appeared to reduce the risk for several digestive tract cancers, according to results of a meta-analysis published in Annals of Oncology.

David A. Tuveson, MD, PhD, FAACR, has been chosen president-elect of American Association for Cancer Research for 2020-2021.

Increases in the proportion of patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at an earlier stage and younger age may be due to improvements in early detection and diagnosis, according to study results published in Journal of National Cancer Institute.

A precision medicine approach to therapy significantly extended survival for patients with pancreatic cancer compared with standard chemotherapy, according to results of a retrospective study published in The Lancet Oncology.

I was delighted to see the Cancer Statistics 2020 report from American Cancer Society, indicating a decline of cancer death rates in the 2016 to 2017 time frame (see related article).

Researchers at Stony Brook University’s Renaissance School of Medicine have developed an enzyme-targeting drug that could prolong survival for patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer.

The randomized phase 3 APACT trial was a well-designed adjuvant trial that evaluated the addition of nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane, Celgene) to gemcitabine — the combination was planned based upon the positive results of the MPACT trial in the metastatic setting. Interestingly, around the same time as the MPACT trial, FOLFIRINOX also showed improved OS in the metastatic setting compared with single-agent gemcitabine. Although median survival with FOLFIRINOX appeared to be numerically superior than with gemcitabine and nab-paclitaxel, subsequent real-world analyses indicated no significant differences in OS or time to treatment failure between the two regimens. It is therefore surprising that although the adjuvant FOLFIRINOX study was positive, the adjuvant gemcitabine and nab-paclitaxel trial was not.

Tumor DNA sequencing to identify appropriate targeted therapies is revolutionizing treatment of a variety of cancers, and pancreatic cancer — a notoriously deadly disease — is no exception.