Boy do we throw a lot of money on pancreatic cancer research.

And that’s great, obviously. Even so, it can be difficult to see the impact of where a lot of that money goes. Scientists publish findings filled with confusing figures and complicated jargon. Some even hide behind the dreaded Academic Journal Paywall.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

Today, I’m here to give a little insight to some recent research in pancreatic cancer. There are serious advances in early detection and prevention of this disease in recent years.

I had the pleasure to meet with one of the authors of this paper, Dr. Murray Korc, to ask him questions about it so that I could give a truly insightful talk about the kind of work that is being done with all of the funding that goes towards these causes.

The impact of research like this is undeniable. Surveys conducted by the American Cancer Society show that over 80% of patients say they’ve had to make financial sacrifices to cover their health care expenses.

According to the survey, 44% dipped into their savings. 36% are in credit card debt to pay medical bills. 25% admitted to canceling appointments because of cost alone. Sounds like I know where we could be putting some of that cancer money, huh?

According to the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the average monthly cost for pancreatic cancer treatment is more than $8,000.

That doesn’t even account for the other expenses one might have, such as rent, or food, or utilities. Let alone a partner, children, or any money left for “fun” stuff.

Research like this has a huge impact. The ability to save millions of people millions of dollars. Prolonging their lives in the process. This is essential. Before we get into it though, we need to cover some bases:

First I’m going to tell you a little about how blood moves things around our bodies. Then I’m going to show you how pancreatic cancer cells hijack this system. Lastly, and most importantly, how the finding I’m sharing with you today from Dr. Murray Korc and his colleagues at the University of California, Irvine has the potential to stop pancreatic cancer from spreading to other places in the body.

So my first question is: How does blood move things around in our bodies?

Well, how do we move around and get from place to place? I live in California, so to get home at the end of the day, I have to take the freeways. To get home, I get onto one freeway to go South. Then I exit onto another freeway going West, then keep driving til I get home.

The bloodstream works in a very similar way: it’s just one massive transportation system inside each of us. You eat your lunch in the afternoon, the nutrients get in their lane. Eventually they take their exit, a lot like how I have to take freeways to get home each day. But, once I get home for the day, I like to stay at home.

Cancer cells, on the other hand, don’t like to stay at home. Pancreatic cancer cells, especially, do NOT like to stay at home. Oftentimes, before doctors even realize the patient has a tumor at all, cancer cells have already left the pancreas, gotten onto their freeway, traveled through the bloodstream, and settled down somewhere else.

According to City of Hope’s Cancer Treatment Network, physicians diagnose forty-five to fifty-five percent of pancreatic cancer patients at this stage, stage 4.

Forty-five to fifty-five percent.

The difference between stages 3 and 4 is that in stage 4, cancer cells have already left home and moved on, while in stage 3, they haven’t quite made it that far. They’re at the entrance to the freeway, about to merge on at full speed, but the meter’s on, and it’s rush hour. So they aren’t going anywhere yet.

That’s where Dr. Korc’s team comes in.

In 2020, Dr. Korc and some of his colleagues carried out a series of experiments to determine whether or not a certain GPS route in the cancer cells’ navigation system contributed to a property called “invasion,” which is essentially when our cells have left home, but haven’t gotten quite to the freeway yet.

To go somewhere new, I put the destination into my Google Maps, which will usually get me to a freeway entrance to begin. And cancer cells planning to leave home do the same thing. The scientists introduced a KNOWN roadblock into the cells, wanting to know whether interfering with this particular route would impact invasion, or not.

In order to test this theory, the researchers left one set of pancreatic cancer cells alone and treated one with the known roadblock, both for a total of 3 days. They found that after 3 days, the cancer cells receiving none of the roadblock were still able to leave home. In the other set of cancer cells, the ones treated with the roadblock, cells couldn’t enter the freeway. The roadblock effectively disabled their travel to nearby blood vessels.

But that isn’t all they found. Along with this major finding, Dr. Korc and the group’s research with this roadblock revealed much more. Not only did the roadblock interfere with invasion, but they also found that in pancreatic cancer cells, which usually have uncontrolled cell growth, the roadblock interfered with that, too. And finally, they found that in the cancer cells treated with the roadblock in combination with other anti-cancer drugs, the combination made them more susceptible to cell death, which paves the way for more healthy cells to grow and take their place.

It’s important to note that while these findings are pivotal, they aren’t final. This study IS limited in the fact that this is a roadblock, not a new route. It showed us where we need to go, but not how to get there.

In order to bring this research to the patient’s bedside, development and rigorous testing of a drug or therapy will have to be developed first following these findings. But, this is an excellent place to start. Going forward, scientists know that one of their primary focuses is to target exactly where this roadblock sits, and that is monumental.

Read more about Dr. Murray Korc:

https://pancreatic.org/about-the-foundation/about-us/scientific-advisory-board/murray-korc-md/

Read the original publication from in 2020:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7602396/