All the money in the world couldn’t save Apple co-founder Steve Jobs from pancreatic cancer.
But in a new study from the University of South Australia, researchers developed a new drug for 500,000 other people currently battling the disease.
While Jobs lived for eight years after diagnosis, 90% of patients die within five years.
Taken as an oral capsule, the new drug Auceliciclib is already demonstrating great potential in clinical trials to treat glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain cancer.
Both these cancers share an insidious reputation for being two of the hardest to treat, with low survival rates and late diagnosis.
Pancreatic cancer is extremely difficult to diagnose at an early stage because there are very few symptoms.
If it is caught early the malignant tumor can be surgically removed, but once it spreads into other organs it is lethal, and chemotherapy and radiotherapy only buy patients a little extra time.
Auceliciclib has been designed to specifically target CDK4/6 enzymes, which have impaired function in pancreatic cancer, making it more effective with fewer side effects compared to the current therapy.
The team is also working on a novel biomarker for pancreatic cancer, hoping to undertake genetic profiling of patients to see if they have any common characteristics.
If you care about pancreatic cancer, please read studies about this diabetes can be an early sign of pancreatic cancer and findings of a new way to treat pancreatic cancer more effectively.
For more information about pancreatic cancer, please see recent studies about this treatment may improve survival of pancreatic cancer and results showing how to stop spread of pancreatic cancer.
One researcher of the study is Professor Shudong Wang.
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