Pancreatic Cancer News and Research

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Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of all cancer deaths in the United States and the third leading cause of cancer deaths in individuals ages 40 to 60. Approximately 37,000 Americans are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer each year, and, each year, approximately the same number die from it. Often, pancreatic cancer is found too late for surgical intervention, and chemotherapy and radiation treatments have little effect.

Scientists elucidate mechanism that causes treatment resistance in aggressive pancreatic cancer

Drug resistance is a major obstacle in the treatment of cancers. In an aggressive type of pancreatic cancer, for instance, drug resistance is associated with the suppression of programmed cell death, which results in the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells.

25 Feb 2022

Novel immune deactivation pathway offers a promising therapeutic approach for cancers

Our immune systems have the potential to find and destroy cancer cells. But cancer cells can be clever and develop tricks to evade the immune system.

17 Feb 2022

Study details how cancer cells hijack the metabolic activity of non-cancer cells

Pancreatic cancer is a unique, elusive, and fatal malignancy, with only approximately a 10% five-year survival rate.

27 Jan 2022

Coffee found to have a stimulating effect on some digestive processes

A new scientific review, published in Nutrients, highlights coffee's effects on digestion and the gut, and its impact on organs involved in digestion.

19 Jan 2022

DNA analyses reveals insights into ancestry, social organization of ancient people in the Nile Valley

The first genome-wide ancient human DNA data from Sudan reveals new insights into the ancestry and social organization of people who lived more than 1,000 years ago in the Nile Valley, an important genetic and cultural crossroads.

20 Dec 2021

Scientists create a three-dimensional pancreatic cancer tumor model

Researchers generated a 3D pancreatic cancer tumor model in the lab, merging a bioengineered matrix and patient-derived cells.

28 Sep 2021

Scientists discover how thousands of tiny anchors help the cells stay put and resist disruptions

Most of the cells in our bodies – be they bone, muscle or pancreas cells – are locked into the right place with the help of tiny anchors (called 'focal adhesions').

From The University of New South Wales (UNSW) 14 Sep 2021

Scientists develop a new way to grow pancreatic "organoids"

MIT engineers, in collaboration with scientists at Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute, have developed a new way to grow tiny replicas of the pancreas, using either healthy or cancerous pancreatic cells.

14 Sep 2021

Study unravels the biomechanical, biophysical response of cancer cells to drugs

A new study reports the use of single-cell, force spectroscopy methods to probe biophysical and biomechanical kinetics of cancer cells.

21 Jul 2021

Atomic force spectroscopy probes cellular biomechanics in response to drugs in hypoxia

Oncotarget published "Dynamic cellular biomechanics in responses to chemotherapeutic drug in hypoxia probed by atomic force spectroscopy" which reported that by exploiting single-cell, force spectroscopy methods, the authors probed biophysical and biomechanical kinetics of brain, breast, prostate, and pancreatic cancer cells with standard chemotherapeutic drugs in normoxia and hypoxia over 12-24 hours.

20 Jul 2021

Liver fibrosis might be treatable with selective immunotoxins

Chronic alcohol abuse and hepatitis can injure the liver and lead to fibrosis, the buildup of collagen and scar tissue. As a potential approach to treating liver fibrosis, University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers and their collaborators are looking for ways to stop liver cells from producing collagen.

13 Jul 2021

New method yields 10 times more accessible details of gene activity in individual cells

Researchers have devised a way to multiply by more than ten-fold the accessible details of gene activity in individual cells. It's a big leap in the effort to understand cancer development, brain function, immunity and other biological processes driven by the complex interactions of multitudes of different cell types.

7 Jul 2021

Commonly used antidepressant drugs can also help the immune system to attack cancer

A class of drug called monoamine oxidase inhibitors is commonly prescribed to treat depression; the medications work by boosting levels of serotonin, the brain's "happiness hormone."

10 Jun 2021

Odor-based test accurately distinguishes hard-to-detect cancers

An odor-based test that sniffs out vapors emanating from blood samples was able to distinguish between benign and pancreatic and ovarian cancer cells with up to 95 percent accuracy, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and Penn's Perelman School of Medicine.

3 Jun 2021

New technology efficiently detects gene mutation in blood with low error rate

Next-generation gene sequencing (NGS) technologies --in which millions of DNA molecules are simultaneously but individually analyzed-- theoretically provides researchers and clinicians the ability to noninvasively identify mutations in the blood stream.

5 May 2021

Adhesion strength and contractility enable metastatic cancer cells to display adurotactic behavior

Bioengineers at the University of California San Diego and San Diego State University have discovered a key feature that allows cancer cells to break from typical cell behavior and migrate away from the stiffer tissue in a tumor, shedding light on the process of metastasis and offering possible new targets for cancer therapies.

From UC San Diego 10 Mar 2021

New computational technique accurately differentiates between normal and cancer cells

Scientists have created a new method to precisely differentiate between data from a wide range of normal cells and cancer cells found inside tumor samples.

19 Jan 2021

New combination therapy could be effective in treating aggressive cancers with common mutations

Scientists have long known that therapies that target the cancer-driving MAPK pathway are only effective in a handful of cancers with specific mutations in a cancer gene called BRAF, and these cancers that initially respond to the therapy often end up developing resistance to the treatment, resulting in relapse for many patients.

15 Dec 2020

Researchers identify way to disrupt the process that promotes pancreatic tumor growth

Researchers say they've identified a way to disrupt a process that promotes the growth of pancreatic cancers -- one of the most difficult and deadly cancers to treat.

9 Dec 2020

Scientists discover new functions of key cellular machine involved in human cancers

Utah scientists have discovered new functions of a key cellular machine that regulates gene packaging and is mutated in 20% of human cancers. The study was published in print today in the journal Molecular Cell.

20 Nov 2020