Nat Med weighs a lot! The new combination therapy significantly inhibited the growth of pancreatic cancer!

March 7, 2019 / bioun / - of all cancers, pancreatic cancer is the most dangerous cancer The one-year survival rate of patients with this cancer is extremely low, and its treatment progress lags behind many other cancers In a recent study published in nature medicine, researchers from the huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI) at the University of Utah (Uu) in the United States found a new strategy for treating pancreatic cancer patients Photo source: Nature Medicine researchers have found that a combination therapy can be more effective in treating this cancer For the first time, HCI researchers have observed the anti-cancer effect of the treatment in laboratory animal models and in the first clinical patient The study, which is currently in clinical trials at HCI, will soon be open nationwide in the United States This clinical trial is called thread, and the national clinical trial batch number is 03825289 The combination therapy uses two FDA approved drugs to treat other diseases, including cancer, and the new combination drug is taken as an oral tablet Pancreatic cancer is characterized by a mutation in a gene called KRAS When KRAS mutates, it will send abnormal signals to promote abnormal proliferation and growth of cancer cells, resulting in uncontrolled growth of tumor At the same time, like all cancer cells, pancreatic cancer cells need to provide raw materials for cell growth through autophagy Past studies have found that it is ineffective to treat pancreatic cancer only through the role of KRAS or by influencing autophagy In this new HCI study, the researchers used two drugs to target KRAS signal and autophagy at the same time, and the results showed significant effects in both mouse models and patients Dr Conan Kinsey, a medical scientist at HCI and professor of internal medicine at UU, led the study with Dr Martin McMahon, a cancer researcher at HCI and professor of dermatology at UU "We observed a significant effect on the growth of pancreatic cancer in combination with two drugs that were not effective alone." McMahon said "We have seen this effect at the cellular level, at the mouse model level, and in a patient In fact, it took us less than two years from cell experiments to human experiments, which is very difficult to achieve in the field of medical science " "In our study, we found that a patient with pancreatic cancer who had been operated on and treated with multiple drugs responded to the treatment." Kinsey said he was also the patient's doctor "This patient is going to be overwhelmed by this disease, but the remarkable effect of our combination therapy has been maintained for several months We need to further study this new combination therapy to better understand whether this good response can be observed in other patients We also need to determine whether there are specific indicators that patients may benefit from this combination therapy before recommending it for mass use " Reference: Conan Kinsey and Martin McMahon et al Protective autophagy eliminated by Raf → MEK → ERK initiation suggestions a treatment strategy for Ras driven cancer, Nature Medicine (2019) Doi: 10.1038/s41591-019-0367-9