Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center specialists have figured out how to accurately test drive chemotherapy drugs to learn in advance which drug treatments offer each individual pancreatic cancer patient the best therapeutic journey.
Test driving cancer drugs is used widely to test cancer therapies, the Hopkins design is personalized to each patient who has relapsed after an initial course of chemotherapy. The standard drug given at this point is gemcitabine, which has a success rate of less than 10 percent.
Reporting on their work in a recent issue of Clinical Cancer Research and at the September meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research in Chicago, the Hopkins team said it took tiny bits of a patient's tumor removed after surgery, and implanted them into one or two mice. This process currently requires about six months to get the information on which drugs work best.
Manuel Hidalgo, M.D. Ph.D., associate professor at Hopkin's Kimmel Cancer Center says that "In the meantime, most patients are receiving their first rounds of chemotherapy and radiation. This information can guide therapy once patients relapse, which is generally in nine to twelve months with pancreatic cancer".
Pancreatic cancer accounts for more than 33,000 new cases in the United States and almost as many deaths. Less than five percent of patients living beyond five years.
