Finally a revolutionary cure for pancreatic cancer?

In 2018, the Nobel Prize for medicine was given to the discoverers of immunotherapy, a new possible cure for cancer. Immunotherapy makes the immune system stronger and more efficient, so tumor cells can be recognized and attacked quicker. Could it also be a solution for pancreatic cancer, one of the most aggressive and lethal types of cancer?

Pancreatic cancer patients, read carefully, because this could possibly turn your life around.

First, let’s have a look at the death rates of pancreatic cancer. They are not what you should call ‘promising’: approximately 43,000 deaths every year in the US alone. Chances of survival are 26% if the cancer is local and 2% (yes, 2%) if the cancer has metastasized at the time of diagnosis. The overall 5-year-survival rate is only 8%. This type of cancer only accounts for 3% of all types but it is still the fourth-leading cause of cancer related deaths in the US. It is expected that by 2030, this will be the second-leading cause. These numbers have to decrease as soon as possible.

The one cure available currently, surgery, only helps a few of the patients. The main reason behind the alarming numbers is the fact that the disease is more or less asymptomatic until the disease is seriously advanced. Besides that, the disease is very resistant against therapies today. A new therapy is needed, desperately.

Well, maybe there is new hope for the treatment of that cursed disease: immunotherapy, which is said to be an up-and-coming treatment for cancer. It is proven that this treatment can help a lot, especially in combination with the other traditional therapies. This therapy can improve the control of solid tumors as it boosts the immune system to recognize cancer cells. Simply explained, the therapy uses viruses which invade the tumor cells. These cells do not have an immune system so when the virus enters, it can do its damage and transforms the tumor cells into self-destruction machines.

However, tumor cells have an annoying trait. They can escape from the human immune surveillance, so they cannot be attacked. Therefore, more research on immunotherapy is necessary. At this moment, it still has limited success and there is much space for improvement, but maybe this therapy will become a new solution to cure the cancer and hopefully as a result the death rates can decrease.

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