Pancreatic cancer is one of the most lethal malignancies, fatal in 88% of patients. It is also one of the hardest to treat.
Tumors can be surgically removed, but they come back within seven to nine months in 90% of patients. Chemotherapy can help prolong life, but it too is rarely a cure. Radiation, immunotherapy and targeted therapies also don't work.
In blood tests, all eight responders made T-cells against their tumors, and those have persisted for at least two years despite a followup course of chemotherapy. The researchers were looking for any correlation between whether the vaccine worked and whether it created a clinical benefit. Sometimes, drugs do what they're supposed to do, but for whatever reason, they don't treat the disease.response correlates with recurrence-free survival. However, it is a small study with only 16 patients in phase one. So it is a correlation. It's not causation. We do have to test causation in a larger clinical trial," said Dr.
Blood circulates through the lymph system, where lymph nodes and lymph organs like the spleen help make T-cells. Now, she has scans every three months to check her pancreas, but so far, the cancer has not returned.Not all of the participants fared as well as she did, though. Eight others didn't develop an adequate pool of programmed T-cells in response to the vaccine, and the researchers have a theory about why.
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