We are living in an incredible age of cancer care. Advanced genomic testing gives doctors a deep dive inside cancer cells and the gene mutations or biological features that may be driving a tumor’s growth. Targeted therapy drugs have been developed to attack those mutations and are designed to spare healthy cells. Immunotherapy drugs, designed to strip away cancer cells’ ability to hide from the immune system, are standard-of-care treatment for many difficult cancers, including lung cancer and melanoma.
But, despite these incredible advancements, one of the most hard-to-treat cancers continues to vex doctors and researchers: pancreatic cancer.
“It’s a very difficult cancer,” says Maurie Markman, MD, President of Medicine & Science, City of Hope® Cancer Centers Atlanta, Chicago and Phoenix. “The location of the pancreas, including being surrounded by a number of vital structures, makes pancreatic cancer difficult to both diagnose and treat surgically. Plus, pancreas cancers are, for a variety of reasons, quite resistant to most available systemic anti-cancer agents.”