Pancreatic cancer
Pancreatic cancer is a deadly disease. It has the highest mortality rate among all cancers and is the fifth-leading cause of cancer death in Australia. Nearly 4,000 Australians were diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2020 and more than 3,000 died. Although survival for many types of cancer has improved, pancreatic cancer has only marginally improved. The disease is extremely hard to treat because it is often not diagnosed until a late stage.
What does the pancreas do?
The pancreas is a gland that sits behind the lower part of your stomach and in front of the spine. Its function is to release enzymes that help you digest food and absorb nutrients produce hormones, including insulin, that process sugar in food and drink.
What causes pancreatic cancer?
It is not yet clear what causes pancreatic cancer. All cancers form when cells change their DNA, or the instructions that tell a cell what to do. Theses mutations cause the cells to grow in an uncontrolled manner and continue living after normal cells would die off. This process causes a tumour to form that can spread to nearby organs and other parts of the body (metastasis). While scientists do not yet know what starts pancreatic cancer, they have identified risk factors that make people more susceptible to this deadly disease.
What are the risk factors of pancreatic cancer?
Factors that increase the risk of pancreatic cancer include
- Smoking
- Chronic inflammation – caused by uncontrolled activation of the immune system – in the pancreas (pancreatitis)
- Diabetes
- Family history of pancreatic cancer
- Being overweight
- Being over 65 years of age.
Types of pancreatic cancer
There are two types of pancreatic cancer, exocrine and endocrine, based on the type of cell that the cancer starts in. Each cancer type acts differently and responds to different treatments. Most pancreatic cancers are exocrine tumours (called pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma). Endocrine tumours are rarer and slower growing.
Pancreatic cancer diagnosis
In most cases, pancreatic cancer does not cause symptoms until it pushes on the surrounding organs or has spread. Pancreatic cancer diagnosis can be difficult because the pancreas sits behind other organs, making it difficult for doctors to see or feel the organ. There is no standard pancreatic cancer test yet. Diagnosis can be complicated, including several tests like MRIs or ultrasounds and taking a tumour sample.
What are pancreatic cancer treatments?
The best chance of successful treatment is when pancreatic cancer is found early. Treatments options are based on the extent of the cancer and include surgery, chemotherapy and radiation, or a combination. Current immunotherapy has not been successful in most patients. While surgery offers the best chance for controlling the disease, most patients are sadly diagnosed too late for surgery. A significant challenge for treating clinicians is that pancreatic tumour cells are surrounded by a dense layer of tissue, called the stroma which is difficult for treatments (eg chemotherapy) to penetrate.
Our pancreatic cancer research
While survival for many types of cancer has improved in the last 40 years, the high mortality and poor survival rates for pancreatic cancer have only marginally improved. Our scientists are studying how this deadly cancer develops to find new ways to save lives through earlier diagnoses and new treatments. They are doing this by identifying regulators of the immune system that drive pancreatic cancer, and thus serve as new biomarkers and therapeutic targets for immune-based treatments.
Precision medicine for pancreatic cancer
Targeted treatment. In collaboration with Dr Daniel Croagh, a leading Monash Health pancreatic surgeon, Professor Brendan Jenkins has co-developed a new protocol to genetically screen virtually all pancreatic cancer patients for specific mutations in their tumours and targeting with specific drugs (precision medicine). This is a substantial improvement on previous genetic screening protocols which could only screen tumours from about 20 per cent of early-stage disease patients who were eligible for surgery.
This discovery means that many more pancreatic cancer patients can be screened for targeted therapy with specific drugs based on their own personalised tumour profile and has laid the groundwork for a clinical trial with Dr Croagh aimed at improving pancreatic cancer survival rates.
Identifying the role of TLR2 in pancreatic cancer
Molecular studies. This project, led by Professor Brendan Jenkins, aims to demonstrate that overactivation of a key innate immune system regulator, called Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2), plays a critical role in pancreatic tumour growth and resistance to chemotherapy drugs.
Cancer and inflammation
Genetic and molecular studies Professor Jenkins’ team is leading worldwide efforts to study inflammation-associated cancers (stomach, lung, pancreatic) and emphysema/chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) using a combination of molecular biological and genetic approaches alongside human translational studies. By exploring uncontrolled activation of the immune system via the interleukin (IL)-6 cytokine family, pattern recognition receptors (such as toll-like receptors) and inflammasomes, their aim is to identify the mechanisms by which the innate immune system promotes inflammation-associated cancers. This will ultimately lead to the development of new drugs to treat these lethal cancers and debilitating inflammatory diseases.
Pancreatic cancer collaborators
Support for people with pancreatic cancer
Hudson Institute scientists cannot provide medical advice.
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