A NEW vaccine could cure up to half of all pancreatic cancer cases and may one day wipe out the disease entirely, scientists say.
Pancreatic cancer is the deadliest cancer in the world.
Some 10,500 people are diagnosed with the disease in the UK each year.
And only about seven out of 100 of them will survive it for five years or more, according to Cancer Research UK.
This is partly because it shows no symptoms until it has already spread to other parts of the body, making it incredibly hard to treat.
While surgery, chemotherapy and radiation can help extend life, they rarely offer a cure.
Now, researchers at Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Clinic, both in the US, have developed a new type of jab to fight pancreatic cancer.
This vaccine uses tiny particles called nanoparticles to train the body’s immune system to find and kill ‘bad’ cancer cells.
In early tests with animals and lab models of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), the most common and aggressive type of pancreatic cancer, more than half of the treated patients were completely cancer-free months after getting the vaccine.
“Pancreatic cancer is super aggressive,” said Professor Zheng-Rong (ZR) Lu, a biomedical engineer at Case School of Engineering, who has been working on the jab.
“So it came as a surprise that our approach works so well.”
The vaccine also encourages the body to create its own T cells, immune fighters specially trained to attack cancer, while building up ‘immune memory’ for longer-term protection.
Unlike some treatments made just for one person, this vaccine could work for many patients with this type of cancer, the experts said.
The exact cause of pancreatic cancer is not always known, but about one in 10 cases of the disease are thought to be caused by genes that increase a person’s risk of developing the cancer.
The scientists believe the jab could even be used as a preventive for people at high risk of pancreatic cancer, such as those with inherited gene mutations linked to the disease.
“We’ve shown that our vaccine generated immune memory in preclinical models,” said Professor Zheng-Rong.
“If we could do that in patients, we could prevent PDAC before tumors start forming, so the vaccines could be either therapeutic or preventative.”
The researchers hope to move towards human clinical trials, once further safety studies in animal models are completed.
Symptoms of pancreatic cancer
PANCREATIC cancer doesn't always cause symptoms in its early stages.
As the cancer grows and you do begin to show signs, these may come and go and be unspecific, making it hard to diagnose, according to Pancreatic Cancer UK.
Common symptoms include:
- Indigestion – a painful, burning feeling in your chest with an unpleasant taste in your mouth
- Tummy or back pain – it may start as general discomfort or tenderness in the tummy area and spread to the back, which get worse lying down and feel better is you sit forward
- Diarrhoea and constipation – see a GP if you have runny poos for more than seven days, especially if you’ve lost weight as well
- Steatorrhoea – pale, oily poo that’s bulky, smells horrible and floats, making it hard to flush
- Losing a lot of weight without meaning to
- Jaundice – yellow skin and eyes, as well as dark pee, pale poo and itchy skin
