Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, often called PDAC, is the most common type of pancreatic cancer and one of the deadliest cancers doctors treat.
It usually grows quickly and often spreads to other parts of the body before it is discovered. Because early symptoms are often mild or do not appear until the disease is advanced, many people are diagnosed too late for surgery to remove the tumor. As a result, survival rates remain very low.
Only about eight out of every 100 people diagnosed with PDAC are still alive five years later. This has driven scientists around the world to search for better ways to understand the disease and develop more effective treatments.
Researchers at the Francis Crick Institute have now made an important discovery that could open the door to a new treatment strategy.
Their findings, published in the journal Nature Cell Biology, identify a protein that appears to help pancreatic cancer become more aggressive. The research suggests that blocking this protein may slow cancer growth and improve future treatments.
The team, led by Axel Behrens, focused on a small group of cells known as cancer stem cells. These cells are especially important because they behave differently from most other cancer cells. Like normal stem cells, which help the body grow and repair damaged tissues, cancer stem cells can create new cancer cells and produce new tumors.
They are also believed to play a major role in cancer returning after treatment and spreading to other parts of the body. Because of this, scientists consider them one of the most important targets in cancer research.
The researchers discovered that many pancreatic cancer stem cells carry a protein called CD9 on their surface. At first, CD9 seemed to be simply a marker that allowed scientists to identify these dangerous cells. However, the study showed that CD9 is much more than a marker. It actively helps the cancer survive and spread.
To test its role, the scientists carried out experiments in mice. When they reduced the amount of CD9 in pancreatic tumor cells, the tumors became much smaller.
When they increased the amount of CD9, the opposite happened. The cancer cells grew faster and formed larger, more aggressive tumors. These results showed that CD9 directly helps pancreatic cancer become more dangerous.
The team also examined information from patients with pancreatic cancer. They found that people whose tumors contained high levels of CD9 generally had poorer outcomes than other patients. Around 10% of people with PDAC fall into this high-CD9 group, suggesting that this protein could help identify patients with particularly aggressive disease.
The researchers then wanted to understand exactly how CD9 helps cancer cells survive. They discovered that CD9 improves the cancer stem cells’ ability to absorb glutamine, an important nutrient that cells use to produce energy and build new molecules.
Cancer cells require large amounts of nutrients to grow quickly, and glutamine is one of their favorite fuel sources. By helping the cells absorb more glutamine, CD9 provides them with the energy they need to grow, divide, and spread throughout the body.
This finding points to a promising new treatment approach. If scientists can develop medicines that block CD9 or stop it from helping cancer cells absorb glutamine, they may be able to starve the cancer stem cells of the fuel they need.
Without enough energy, these dangerous cells may become weaker, grow more slowly, or even die. Such treatments could work alongside existing therapies to improve patient outcomes.
Although much more research is needed before this approach can be tested widely in people, the discovery gives researchers an exciting new direction. Future studies will need to determine whether drugs targeting CD9 are safe and effective in clinical trials.
The study was led by Axel Behrens and his colleagues at the Francis Crick Institute and was published in Nature Cell Biology. The research provides fresh hope that understanding the biology of cancer stem cells may eventually lead to more effective treatments for pancreatic cancer, one of the world’s most difficult cancers to treat.
If you care about cancer, please read studies that artificial sweeteners are linked to higher cancer risk, and how drinking milk affects risks of heart disease and cancer.
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