RNS: Pancreatic Cancer, March 2009
TIME: 2:22
URL: http://www2.med.umich.edu/prmc/media/newsroom/details.cfm?ID=1055
U-M Health Minute: Today’s top health issues and medical research
U-M researchers ID gene involved in pancreatic cancer
ATDC levels average 20-fold higher in cancerous cells
Suggested lead: Pancreatic cancer is the 11th most common cause of cancer in the United States, but it is the 4th leading cause of cancer death. Each year, about 40-thousand Americans are diagnosed with the disease; within 5 years, almost all will die from it. University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center
researchers have uncovered an important piece of the puzzle. Here is Andi McDonnell with more.
Researchers from the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center have identified a gene that is overexpressed in 90 percent of pancreatic cancers, the most deadly type of cancer.
Expression of the gene, called ATDC, is on average 20 times higher in pancreatic cancer cells than in cells from a normal pancreas. What’s more, the gene appears to make pancreatic cancer cells resistant to current therapies.
Dr. Diane Simeone (sim-ee-OWN-ee), (M.D.), director of the Multidisciplinary Pancreatic Cancer Clinic at the U-M Comprehensive Cancer Center tells us . . .
“One of the challenges in pancreatic cancer is it’s biologically aggressive and it does not respond well to the therapies we currently have in hand, specifically chemotherapy and radiation. What we find is that this gene not only causes the cancer cells to grow faster and be more aggressive but that it also makes the cancer cells particularly resistant to chemotherapy and radiation and so it may be that by targeting this gene we can make cancer cells more sensitive to the therapies we already have in hand.”
In addition, the researchers found that ATDC is most highly expressed at the point when pre-cancerous cells become malignant. ATDC was also linked to increased levels of a signaling protein which is known to play a key role in cancer development.
Researchers believe ATDC has potential as a target for developing future therapies. It could also help doctors determine when a patient has pancreatic cancer and when it’s chronic pancreatitis, a diagnosis that’s often difficult to make without surgery. In some cases, this may allow patients to avoid an operation.
Simeone tells us . . .
“Since pancreatic cancer is so difficult to diagnose this gene may aid in it’s diagnosis in some groups of patients. We don’t find that it circulates in the blood but we do find that it may be helpful in distinguishing pancreatic cancer from chronic pancreatitis. Sometimes those two disease entities are impossible to distinguish prior to an operative procedure. So we think it may save some folks an operation when they don’t really need one.”
Results of the study appear in the March issue of Cancer Cell.
Andi McDonnell, U-M Health System News
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