A potential breakthrough in pancreatic cancer treatment has been uncovered at the Sheba Medical Centre in Israel, pioneered by head researcher Dr Talia Golan.
Pancreatic cancer is the 12th most common cancer in the world, and the 4th deadliest. A targeted cancer therapy drug developed together with pharma giants AstraZeneca and Merck & Co. Inc. has been reported to offer “potential hope” for patients with a specific kind of pancreatic cancer, as it delays the progression of the disease.
The breakthrough is a drug named CPI-613, a pharmacological inhibitor of the enzyme poly polymerase. An enzyme inhibitor is a drug that binds to the enzyme and decreases activity. This has the ability to kill a pathogen through starving it. Cancer is often more dependent on the enzymes that support it increasing the effectiveness of the treatment.
Those who received the medication in the study on average went 7.4 months before their disease began to worsen, known as “progression free survival” rates, compared to 3.8 months in the group that took the placebo, the researchers said.
154 patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer were involved in the research. Metastatic pancreatic cancer is caused by the cells BCRA 1 and BCRA 2 mutating genetically, a significant number of Ashkenazi Jews carry these two genes making them at greater risk of mutation. Some patients received a 300 milligram dose of CPI-613 twice daily whilst others, selected randomly, received placebo mediation twice daily.
Dr Golan claimed that this research is the “advent of ‘precision medicine’” as this treatment is cell metabolic therapy (starving the cells to death), something that had been previously dismissed.
However, there is “no difference” in overall survival of the cancer as the medication does little to kill the mutated cells but rather renders them immobile.
