New drug hope for pancreatic cancer

A commonly used chemotherapy drug may offer a new lifeline to sufferers of one of the most deadly cancers, research has shown.

Trial results suggest that the drug 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) is an effective alternative for pancreatic cancer patients who fail to respond to standard treatment.

They also raise hopes of providing better therapy by combining the two drugs.

A study now under way is looking at the effect of prescribing a pill version of 5-FU with the more expensive standard chemotherapy drug, gemcitabine.

5-FU is currently used to treat a wide range of cancers including those affecting the bowel, breast and ovaries.

Almost 8,000 people are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer each year in the UK.

The disease is one of the hardest cancers to treat, and only around 3% of patients survive more than five years.

The new findings are published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Jama).

Study leader Professor John Neoptolemos, director of the Liverpool Cancer Research UK Centre based at the University of Liverpool, said: "Until now the best way to treat pancreatic cancer has been unclear. But these results are the first to directly compare these two chemotherapies and show undoubtedly that they are both as effective as each other.

"Importantly this means patients now have a backup in case their cancer fails to respond to the first line of treatment. A new trial investigating whether combining these two treatments could be even more effective and prolong life is already under way and we look forward to seeing the result."

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Pathway of dealiest cancers blocked by potential new drug

Scientists from Cancer Research Technology Ltd (CRT) presented new findings at the 2009 AACR Meeting, Denver, showing that a potent and selective inhibitor of protein kinase D called CRT0066101, inhibits the growth of pancreatic tumours.

The research - presented by CRT’s Dr Christopher Ireson - was a collaborative effort between scientists at CRT’s discovery laboratories and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center. These results show for the first time that an inhibitor of PKD can slow the growth of tumours in pancreatic cancer models. In addition, experiments carried out by CRT have shown that CRT0066101 is also effective at inhibiting the growth of tumours in a lung cancer model. The scientists believe that the drug has the potential to treat other cancers too.

PKD is a relatively newly identified family of serine/threonine kinases comprising PKD1, PKD2 and PKD3. The potential of PKD as a new drug target was discovered by Enrique Rozengurt, Doreen Cantrell and Peter Parker and funded by Cancer Research UK. Following this discovery, an intensive drug discovery effort led by CRT’s Head of Medicinal Chemistry, Dr Tony Raynham, cumulated in the identification of CRT0066101 as a lead candidate for pre-clinical studies. Since then, PKD has been identified as playing a central role in the development of a number of cancers. In addition to its role in the growth of tumour cells, PKD has also been shown to play a pivotal role in cell survival and angiogenesis - a process by which tumours form new blood vessels - which is central to tumour growth and spread.

CRT’s discovery laboratories director Dr Hamish Ryder said: “We focused on pancreatic and lung cancer tumours because they represent cancers with a significant unmet medical need. “The CRT model of combining promising basic science with the capability of the industrially-focus Discovery Laboratories gives us a unique opportunity to rapidly develop potential new molecules to novel targets, and through partnering with industry, explore the potential to see if one day it might help treat cancer patients in the future”.

Dr Sushovan Guha who leads the laboratory at MD Anderson Cancer Center, said: “We are very optimistic about CRT0066101’s pharmacological potential. We believe this is the first orally administered small-molecule inhibitor of PKD with significant biological efficacy in pre-clinical animal models of pancreatic cancer. My conviction is that we will show the drug can also prevent the proliferation of cancer cells by blocking their supply of blood - through neo-angiogenesis. This would mean it offers a double action treatment but this needs to be proved through further work.”

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New Pancreatic Cancer Drug in the Works

An experimental drug called AMG 479 shows promise against pancreatic cancer.

That news comes from researchers at Amgen, the drug company developing AMG 479.

AMG 479 is a biologic drug that targets insulin-like growth factor (IGF) type 1 receptors.

"We know that insulin-like growth factors play a role in cancer development, particularly in mediating cell survival," Amgen's Pedro Beltran, PhD, states in a news release from the American Association of Cancer Research.

In lab tests, AMG 479 did what it was supposed to do -- target insulin-like growth receptors on pancreatic cancer cells without hampering insulin.

"This is the first drug that specifically targets the receptor for these growth factors without cross-reacting with the closely related insulin receptor," Beltran states.

In other experiments, AMG 479 curbed the growth of human pancreatic tumors grafted onto mice by up to 80%, and using AMG 479 and the chemotherapy drug gemcitabine thwarted pancreatic tumors further.

Beltran's team reports the results from those experiments in Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.

AMG 479 is being studied in pancreatic cancer patients; results aren't in from that study yet.

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