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Personalized Medicine vs. Advanced Cancer
Targeted Therapy vs. Pancreatic Cancer
Also at the meeting, Mayo Clinic researchers reported that a combination of two targeted therapies can kill pancreatic cancer cells in the lab, opening up the possibility of a new approach to treating the deadly disease.
An estimated 38,000 people in the U.S. were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2008, according to the American Cancer Society. About 34,000 Americans died of the disease, making it the fourth deadliest cancer.
By the time the cancer is diagnosed, “there are few surgical options,” says Mamta Gupta, PhD. A commonly used drug is Gemzar, which extends life by five to six months, she says.
In an attempt to find a better treatment, Gupta and colleagues treated pancreatic cancer cells with a combination of two drugs: an mTOR inhibitor called rapamycin and a histone deacetylase inhibitor called LBH589.
The two drugs together killed about seven times more cancer cells than either drug alone, she tells WebMD.
Targeting Pancreatic Cancer’s Roots
Still, other researchers reported that combination drug treatment can slash the number of pancreatic cancer stem cells in mice, curbing tumor growth.
The findings are in line with the latest theory of what causes cancer, namely that stem cells hiding within tumors drive their growth. Conventional treatments fail to cure cancer, according to the theory, because they are targeting the wrong cells.
Rajesh Kumar NV, PhD, of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University, and colleagues studied mice implanted with human pancreatic tumors.
The mice received gemcitabine (Gemzar), the most common drug treatment for pancreatic cancer; the experimental drug tigatuzumab, which induces cell death; or a combination of the two agents.
Treatment with gemcitabine and tigatuzumab provided a better punch than either drug alone, NV tells WebMD.
Treatment with gemcitabine alone reduced tumor size, but the tumor cells that remained were rich in pancreatic cancer stem cells, he says. In nearly all cases, the tumors returned.
The combo treatment, on the other hand, reduced the number of pancreatic cancer stem cells, caused tumor remission, and significantly increased the time to cancer progression, NV says.
Targeting cancer-sustaining pancreatic cancer stem cells is of paramount significance since there are few effective therapies for pancreatic cancer and most of the patients die within the first year of diagnosis, Kumar says.
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Targeted Therapy for Lung Cancer
