Re: an issue close to the heart of our family, it's always too early to tell with new drugs that attempt to stem the vile disease of pancreatic cancer (or any other intractable cancer) but today's Boston Globe leads with a new approach - going after the "microenvironment," where the cells live rather than going after the cells directly. In the case of pancreatic cancer, the cancer cells themselves are nearly impenetrable (they're encased in fibrous tissue) so researchers have been trying to find various tunneling mechanisms to get to the source of cell proliferation. I'm no doctor and no scientist so please go back to the original - but here are the key grafs:
At Infinity Pharmaceuticals, researchers have developed a pancreatic cancer drug that inhibits signaling between the cancer cell and its microenvironment, thinning a fibrous network of tissue that helps shield cancer cells from drugs.
Data from a small safety trial presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology this year showed preliminary signs that the drug, in combination with the chemotherapy currently used to treat the cancer, called gemcitabine, could shrink tumors.
