A Little Hope For A Horrible Disease

Pancreatic cancer is a horrible disease which kills close to 90% of its victims. Despite decades of research into early detection and treatment, we haven’t seen much improvement in this grim statistic.

But a group of researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York is doing some encouraging research that may give us some hope for the future. Before I tell you about it though, it’s important to remember two things: 1) Research like this is very preliminary and no matter how good the results may look, they may not hold up when the technique is tested more widely; 2) The government is slashing support for this sort of research, and several states are trying to block the technology that makes this new treatment possible.

Pancreatic cancer is hard to treat for a variety of reasons. Our bodies can be very effective at killing cancer cells. If a cancer cell looks “foreign” or “not me” to your immune system, your immune cells can attack and kill it. But pancreatic cancers don’t seem to produce a lot of the chemicals that mark them as foreign and therefore a target for your immune system. Essentially, they “hide” from our immune system. But what if we could “reveal” these cells so that our bodies could target them for destruction?

In this—very small and preliminary—study, researchers looked at patients whose pancreas tumor was small enough to be removed. They took the tumor cells and looked for chemicals (“antigens”) that mark them as foreign, and designed an mRNA vaccine to teach each patient’s immune system to recognize the cancer cells.

Each of the 16 patients in the study had an mRNA vaccine custom-made for their tumor and they tolerated it well—it appeared to be quite safe. Scientists continued to monitor these patients to see how they would do over time, and recently published their findings. Half of the patients developed the hoped-for immune response. After about 3 years, 6 of those 8 patients were still alive and their cancers had not recurred. This is much better than would be expected if they had only had the usual treatments available.

But let’s add some context. As noted above, this study is very small, and may not pan out when tested on larger numbers of patients. We’ll hopefully know more over the next few years. That is, if we are even allowed to continue the research.

The NIH helped to fund this study, but NIH funding is being slashed by the Trump administration. To add to the trouble, GOP politicians across the country are trying to ban mRNA technology.

I have a very personal dislike for pancreatic cancer. You see, my youngest daughter had another dad before me. Shortly after she was born, he died of pancreatic cancer. You can see him in her walk, her facial expressions, her sense of humor. Only the future can tell us if she also inherited his risk. When I read about Trump destroying the NIH or his lackeys trying to ban mRNA vaccines, I wonder how many years this sort of research could be set back. Will it be available when my daughter is older? Will current science and health policies kill someone you love?

Politicians like to get re-elected. Please, please contact your representatives and tell them to save research funding, to stop the destruction of our public health system.1

Stay well.

-pal