A laboratory on Long Island has found a breakthrough in the fight against pancreatic cancer that can “intercept” its spread.
Now Amy Pollaci, whose father Bill Reindl was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer last summer, has new hope with this discovery.
“It’s a golden ticket, a second chance,” she told Fox 5 News.
Experts at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory have discovered a way to block threatening biological factors associated with another critical protein called KRAS.
“Over 95% of pancreatic cancer patients have mutations in KRAS,” researcher Claudia Tonelli said in a release.
She and her colleagues recently discovered that KRAS gets mutated from another gene called FGFR2, making “those ‘early versions’ of pancreatic cancer become much more aggressive.”
The gene is also known to be present in other cancers as well.
When Tonelli managed to, in mice, successfully inhibit FGFR2, plus the EGFR protein — it is known to accelerate pancreatic cancer — she observed slower forming tumors.
“With an increasing number of FGFR2 inhibitors entering the clinic, our study lays the foundation to explore their use in combination with EGFR inhibitors for pancreatic cancer interception,” she said.
Tonelli believes that those with a family history of the illness will be first in line for the new treatment.