Huge pancreatic cancer breakthrough as scientists achieve ‘permanent disappearance’ of disease with new triple-threat approach tested in lab

Scientists have come one step closer to curing pancreatic cancer after a new drug trial showed evidence of reversing the disease.

A research team from the Spanish National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) have developed an experimental triple-drug therapy that completely eliminated pancreatic tumours in mice.

The findings of their study, published in medical journal PNAS, explained how the new therapy targets a mutation of the KRAS gene which is seen in about 90 per cent of pancreatic cancers.

The mutated gene, known scientifically as an oncogene, causes cells to grow and divide uncontrollably, leading to cancer.

The KRAS oncogene has historically proved to be hard to treat, with an existing treatment which blocks it from replicating – and passing on on more mutated cells -quickly being ‘outwitted’.

However, the new treatment, using three different drugs, blocks three of the cancer’s ‘survival routes’ simultaneously, makes it harder for tumours to develop, and resist treatment.

This suggests that pancreatic cancer may need combination treatments, not single drugs.

The researchers, led by Dr Mariano Barbacid, tested the approach on three types of laboratory mice; ones who had been genetically engineered to be born with the cancer-causing genes; ones who had human pancreatic cancer tissue implanted into their pancreas; and ones who had had pancreatic cancer cells surgically implanted directly into their pancreas.

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