The Experimental Oncology Group at the National Research Centre (CNIO) in Madrid has recently unveiled findings from genetically engineered mice afflicted with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. The mice "underwent rapid apoptotic cell death that resulted in complete tumour regressions and remained tumour-free for over 200 days post-treatment." While results of these animal studies are promising towards determining therapeutic vulnerabilities of pancreatic cancer, Dr. Ben Westphalen, chair of the European Society of Medical Oncology (ESMO) Precision Oncology Task Force cautions that these results cannot yet be applied to patient care. More work is needed to determine side effects of the triple combination therapy in humans.
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For years RAS felt like the central but unreachable driver in pancreatic cancer, so any credible inhibition strategy changes the tone of the conversation. The challenge will be durability, resistance pathways and whether benefit extends beyond narrow molecular subsets. Following how oncbrothers track these early signals is useful, because pancreatic cancer has seen many promising mechanisms fail at the translation step.
ReplyDeleteComplete tumour regressions with mice staying tumour-free for over 200 days is a jaw-dropping preclinical result — no wonder RAS is having its "finally druggable" moment. The triple-combination framing is interesting too, since single-agent inhibition in such a redundant pathway rarely holds for long. Dr. Westphalen's caution is well placed, though; pancreatic cancer has buried too many mouse cures at the translation step to celebrate before the human data arrives.
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