{"id":24979,"date":"2019-08-05T18:12:22","date_gmt":"2019-08-05T18:12:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tmc.edu\/news\/2019\/08\/starving-pancreatic-cancer-as-a-new-technique-for-treatment\/"},"modified":"2019-08-28T16:10:51","modified_gmt":"2019-08-28T16:10:51","slug":"starving-pancreatic-cancer-as-a-new-technique-for-treatment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tmc.edu\/news\/2019\/08\/starving-pancreatic-cancer-as-a-new-technique-for-treatment\/","title":{"rendered":"Starving pancreatic cancer as a new technique for treatment"},"content":{"rendered":"
Pancreatic cancer cells are cloaked in a protective shield that blocks drug therapies from penetrating their surface, making pancreatic cancer extremely difficult to treat. But a team of researchers at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center has discovered a potential approach that would essentially \u201cstarve\u201d these cancer cells to death.<\/p>\n
Successful therapies that target the molecular pathways of pancreatic cancer are scarce. In a recent study published in Nature<\/em>, researchers sought to understand how all proteins on the surface of pancreatic cancer cells are rearranged and how that regrouping affects tumor cell growth.<\/p>\n Very often, researchers will focus on one particular gene protein, said the study\u2019s senior author, Giulio Draetta, M.D., Ph.D.<\/a>, chief scientific officer and professor of genomic medicine at MD Anderson. But this time, Draetta and his team took the opposite approach.<\/p>\n \u201cWe asked, instead: can we look at anything that is expressed there on every pancreatic tumor cell?\u201d Draetta explained.<\/p>\n By doing so, he and his team discovered that a particular protein, syndecan 1 (SDC1), mobilizes to the cell surface after receiving a signal transmitted from a mutated oncogene, KRAS. When KRAS functions normally, it regulates cell growth; however, when it becomes mutated, its signaling goes haywire and causes an uncontrolled overgrowth of cells\u2014oftentimes leading to the development of cancer.<\/p>\n The American Cancer Society estimates approximately 56,770 Americans will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2019. The five-year survival rate is 9 percent.<\/p>\n A certain subtype of pancreatic cancer known as pancreatic ductal adenocardinoma (PDAC), which makes up 90 percent of all pancreatic cancers, is particularly devastating. Standard treatments for PDAC include surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and immunotherapy, but because it is one of the most chemo-resistant cancers, prognosis remains bleak. The five-year PDAC survival rate hovers between 5 and 7 percent, according to a paper published in\u00a0the International Journal of Molecular Sciences<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n