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Pancreatic Cancer Cells ‘Addicted’ To Key Protein

Web Desk (November 16, 2018): New research finds that the cancer cells in a particularly aggressive form of pancreatic cancer rely heavily on a key protein to grow and spread.

Pancreatic cancer is particularly difficult to treat. The American Cancer Society estimate that up to 61 percent of people with early-stage pancreatic cancer live for at least 5 years after diagnosis.Some subtypes of pancreatic cancer are more aggressive than others. For example, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is usually already at an advanced stage when doctors detect it, and its 5-year survival rate is less than 10 percent.

However, new research may have identified the main weakness of this aggressive form of cancer, which is that its cells are addicted to a key protein.

Dr. Christopher Vakoc, PhD, a professor at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, and his team investigated the reason why this subtype of pancreatic cancer is so aggressive.Until now, the researchers knew that a certain mutation was to blame for the progression of the disease, but they did not know exactly what triggered the mutation in the first place.

In the new study, they find a gene encoding a protein that is highly expressed in this particularly aggressive cancer.

Somerville explains that a person with a pancreatic cancer diagnosis goes on to live for an average of 2 years. However, those in the small subset of people with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma have a much less favorable outlook of under a year.

“This version of the cancer is especially deadly,” notes Somerville.

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