The pancreas is a small but important organ in the body. It helps with digestion and controls blood sugar levels.
Sadly, it is also the site of one of the most deadly cancers—pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, or PDAC. This is the most common type of pancreatic cancer and the third-leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States.
It is hard to detect early, comes back in many cases, and only 13 out of 100 people diagnosed survive more than five years.
Now, a team of doctors and engineers at the University of Illinois Chicago is working on a promising new idea. They are studying how lidocaine, a common pain-relief drug used for over 65 years, might help stop this cancer from spreading.
Their new research focuses on cancer cells that break away during surgery and enter the bloodstream. Their findings were published in the journal Lab on a Chip.
When doctors remove a tumor during surgery, some cancer cells can escape into the blood. These are called circulating tumor cells, or CTCs. Patients with more aggressive CTCs usually face a higher risk of the cancer returning.
After surgery, people need time to heal before they can start chemotherapy. During this time, those CTCs can travel and start new tumors. But earlier lab studies suggest that lidocaine might help trap these cells in the bloodstream so the immune system can clear them out.
Dr. Gina Votta-Velis, one of the lead researchers, believes this approach could lower the chance of cancer spreading. She said that if lidocaine can calm the cancer cells and reduce their ability to cause new tumors, it could greatly help patients.
The tricky part is finding these rare cancer cells in the blood. There may only be 30 to 40 of them in billions of blood cells. To solve this, Votta-Velis teamed up with Dr. Ian Papautsky, an engineer who studies how tiny amounts of fluid move.
He helped create a small device made of glass and plastic, about the size of a finger. It has very narrow channels and works like a filter, separating cancer cells from the rest of the blood based on their size. This process is known as a liquid biopsy.
Cancer cells are usually larger and softer than normal blood cells, so the device can catch them without breaking them. In past tests, the method was 93% accurate. In this study, they compared their method to another tool called EasySep, which uses magnets to pull cancer cells out. That method can sometimes damage the cells.
When they tested both tools on real blood samples from people with pancreatic cancer, the new device found eight times more cancer cells and worked faster—sometimes in just 20 minutes.
This breakthrough could be life-changing. Pancreatic cancer often has no symptoms until it’s too late, so being able to find cancer cells through a simple blood test could help doctors diagnose it earlier and start treatment sooner.
Dr. Pier Giulianotti, a surgeon on the team, said this is an important step in understanding how cancer spreads and how to stop it. He explained that many types of cancer move through the bloodstream, so finding ways to control this could change how cancer is treated.
This research brings new hope. By combining a common drug like lidocaine with a smart device to find cancer cells, scientists are opening new doors in cancer care. It’s a small but powerful step toward better, more personalized treatment for one of the deadliest cancers.
If you care about cancer, please read studies that a low-carb diet could increase overall cancer risk, and vitamin D supplements could strongly reduce cancer death.
For more information about health, please see recent studies about how drinking milk affects the risks of heart disease and cancer and results showing higher intake of dairy foods linked to higher prostate cancer risk.
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