Precision Medicine Increases Lifespan of Pancreatic Cancer Patients

A precision medicine service designed to understand differences in patients’ tumors could help people with pancreatic cancer live longer, according to data from the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN).

The service, called Know Your Tumor, determines whether tumor differences can impact which treatment options may work best for each patient. In a study published in the journal Lancet Oncology, researchers show that patients who are able to go on therapies that match their tumor biology live an average of one year longer than patients who don’t.

Patients who enroll in the service receive a report detailing all the findings in their tumor, as well as treatment options for that patient to consider.

“Looking at reports from 1,082 patients with pancreatic cancer, we found that one of every four tumors had a change that indicates certain treatment options may work particularly well for that patient,” said Lynn Matrisian, PhD, MBA, PanCAN’s chief science officer and co-author of the study, published in partnership with Perthera, Inc., and other collaborators.

Patients whose tumors had one of these changes received a treatment option that was listed in their report as matching their tumor biology. These patients lived an average of one year longer than patients with similar changes who didn’t receive a matched therapy or patients whose report didn’t show a change that aligned with particular treatment options.

The results of the study reveal the impact precision medicine approaches can have on patient health, the team stated.

“These real-world outcomes suggest that the adoption of precision medicine can have a substantial effect on survival in patients with pancreatic cancer, and that molecularly guided treatments targeting oncogenic drivers and the DNA damage response and repair pathway warrant further prospective evaluation,” researchers said.

The service offered two types of tests to pancreatic cancer patients: Tumor molecular profiling, which analyzes a small piece of tumor tissue for mutations or other changes that occur in the patient’s pancreatic cancer cells; and genetic testing, which evaluates a patient’s saliva or blood for genetic changes they were born with.

These tests are essential for understanding specific tumor differences in each patient, researchers noted.

“The only way pancreatic cancer patients can know if any of these changes occur in their tumor or their genetic makeup is through testing,” Matrisian said.

“The results from our paper are a strong reminder to healthcare professionals to offer tumor profiling and genetic testing to all their pancreatic cancer patients. And it will further provide incentive to the scientific community to pursue new targeted treatments for even more pancreatic cancer patients.”

The most common tumor changes researchers saw in these reports were defects in the cancer cell’s ability to repair DNA damage, such as BRCA mutations. These mutations can increase a person’s lifetime risk of developing breast, ovarian, pancreatic, and other types of cancer. In patients with these changes, chemotherapies that contain platinum are particularly effective treatments.

Other tumor changes were able to predict a patient’s response to immunotherapy drugs and other standard or experimental treatment options.

With this precision medicine service, the research team hopes to test all pancreatic cancer patients and help people understand changes in their tumors or genetic makeup that may inform treatment decisions. Patients will be able to get matched with therapies that may help them live longer, and researchers could develop more treatment options that can benefit additional subsets of pancreatic cancer patients.

“We’re grateful to our research partners and our incredibly generous donors and sponsors who made this work possible,” Matrisian said. “Most of all, we’re grateful to the patients and their families who agreed to participate in this service to allow us to gather and publish these pivotal results.”