Editor’s note: January is Pancreatic Cancer Clinical Trials Awareness Month. Today’s article describes the complex and changing landscape of clinical trials available to patients. Keep an eye on how we share stories about people who have participated in pancreatic cancer clinical trials, as well as other useful resources.
All treatments available today have been approved through a clinical trial. Learn more about some of the types of pancreatic cancer clinical trials available – even during a pandemic – and how these have changed over time.
Clinical trials are becoming more detailed. We have learned that both a patient’s tumor biology and their genetic make-up can influence treatment choices that may work best for them. Results from PanCAN’s detailed medical service Know Your Tumor® showed that patients who were able to undergo treatment based on their tumor biology lived on average one year longer than patients who were unable to receive matched treatment.
Using this precise treatment approach across all types of cancer, several treatments have gone through clinical trials and are now approved for cancer patients with tumors anywhere in the body that have specific genetic traits.
Genetic changes of patients born with a case, too – based on results from a clinical trial, the drug Lynparza® is now approved for patients with BRCA-induced pancreatic cancer who have had their tumor treated with chemotherapy in whether platinum. .
Many clinical trials are now testing the efficacy of experimental therapies on patients with biological characteristics of a tumor or genetic shape. This personalized, detailed treatment approach has become much more common in recent years as researchers better understand the relationship between patients ’biology and their response to treatment.
Clinical trials may aim to make immunotherapies effective in pancreatic cancer patients. An immunotherapy method – getting the patient ‘s own immune system to recognize and destroy the tumor – has achieved great progress in some types of cancer. But most tumors of pancreatic cancer patients do not respond to immunotherapy – yet.
Clinical trials testing the drug Keytruda® in patients with solid tumors anywhere in the body with specific biological characteristics showed that the immunotherapy drug is effective in a subset of tumors of pancreatic cancer patients.
Learning from the Keytruda trial and other scientific and clinical studies has revealed new strategies to try to make immunotherapeutic treatments work better for pancreatic cancer patients. Clinical trials are underway to test a novel combination of experimental immunotherapy drugs, sometimes in combination with other immunotherapies and / or targeted therapies, chemotherapy or radiation.
Clinical trials are available with patients at any stage of the disease and with different treatment histories. Pancreatic cancer patients may choose to enroll in a clinical trial as their first line of treatment, begin routine treatments first or participate in trials at multiple times on their treatment journey.
It is encouraging that many clinical trials – more than ever before – are available for patients who have received one, two or more types of treatment before.
This increase indicates that patients are living longer and feeling well enough to accept additional treatment options, and that pharmaceutical companies are trying to build more effective care treatments to extend patient life.
Clinical trial design is becoming more innovative. Routine clinical trials determine whether a single experimental treatment option is more effective or causes fewer side effects than the standard of conventional care. Progress can be slow, and can take many patients and several years to learn if the new drug works and is accepted.
Suitable platform clinical trials are designed to test more than one experimental treatment at the same time and require fewer patients and less time to determine if the drugs are effective.
We recently launched PanCAN’s Precision PromiseSM an evolving clinical trial, which aims to make the development of new pancreatic cancer treatments faster, faster and cheaper. Patients are currently enrolled at Consortium of Clinical Trials sites across the country.
Clinical trials testing conventional therapies are also evolving. For many years, there was only one level of care chemotherapy for patients with pancreatic cancer. Now, there are several.
Clinical trials are underway to determine which patients best fit that standard of care choice – and to find ways to determine more quickly whether treatment is effective.
There are also tests to check the range, delivery method and appropriate time for chemotherapy, radiation and surgery – and to identify treatments that could help a patient qualify for surgery if the surgery is not available. their tumor is medically removed at diagnosis.
And, trials are testing new drugs and ways to make conventional treatments more effective. Clinical trials examine experimental surgical techniques, such as the use of electric currents or heat to help destroy the cancer cells. Other clinical trials are evaluating the efficacy of combining chemotherapy with experimental drugs and devices that improve the targeting and delivery of the drug to the tumor.
As we continue to learn more about pancreatic cancer patients and their tumors, clinical trials are designed to meet patient needs and accelerate progress toward new, better treatment options. Scientific and clinical research makes progress – and with it comes change.
