Scientists have reported an encouraging advance that could improve treatment for one of the world’s deadliest cancers.
A new clinical study suggests that adding a special type of focused ultrasound to standard chemotherapy may help more people with pancreatic cancer live longer and become eligible for surgery.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the hardest cancers to treat. It often grows quietly without causing clear symptoms until it has already spread or wrapped around nearby blood vessels. Because of this, many people cannot have surgery when they are first diagnosed, and their chances of long-term survival are low.
Doctors usually treat these patients with a powerful chemotherapy combination called FOLFIRINOX. This treatment can shrink tumors and slow the disease, but it does not work well enough for everyone. Researchers around the world are searching for ways to make chemotherapy more effective without increasing harmful side effects.
A research team at Seoul National University Hospital in South Korea tested a new approach by combining FOLFIRINOX with a special type of focused ultrasound. Unlike older forms of ultrasound that create heat, this technique is designed to make cancer treatment work better without burning tissue. Scientists believe it may help chemotherapy reach cancer cells more effectively.
The phase 2 clinical trial included 60 people with either borderline resectable pancreatic cancer or locally advanced pancreatic cancer. Fifty-six patients completed four treatment cycles and their results were compared with a carefully matched group of patients who had previously received FOLFIRINOX alone.
The combined treatment produced encouraging results. About 64% of patients experienced meaningful tumor shrinkage, compared with about 36% in the chemotherapy-only group. More patients also became eligible for surgery, with 52% able to undergo an operation aimed at removing the cancer, compared with 30% of those who received only chemotherapy.
People receiving the new treatment also lived longer on average. Median overall survival reached 24 months, compared with 17 months in the comparison group, while the time before the cancer worsened increased from 11 months to 16 months. Even a few extra months are considered important for pancreatic cancer because the disease is often aggressive.
The researchers found the biggest survival benefit among patients whose tumors were considered borderline resectable. Patients with locally advanced disease also appeared to benefit, although the difference was not large enough to prove statistically that it was not due to chance.
Safety was another encouraging finding. The researchers did not observe focused ultrasound-related injuries or damage to nearby organs during follow-up. This suggests the treatment may improve chemotherapy without adding major risks, although larger studies are still needed.
The investigators stressed that these results should be interpreted carefully. The study compared patients with a matched historical group instead of randomly assigning participants to different treatments. Because of this design, only a larger randomized phase 3 clinical trial can determine whether the new approach truly improves outcomes.
The study was led by Dr. Jae Young Lee and colleagues at Seoul National University Hospital and published in the European Journal of Cancer. Researchers are now organizing a phase 3 trial to confirm whether adding focused ultrasound to FOLFIRINOX should become part of standard treatment for pancreatic cancer.
These findings are promising because they suggest doctors may be able to improve an existing treatment instead of creating an entirely new drug. If future trials confirm these results, more patients may become eligible for life-saving surgery and live longer without increasing treatment risks.
At the same time, the study was relatively small and not fully randomized, so the results should be viewed as encouraging rather than conclusive until stronger evidence becomes available.
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Source: Seoul National University Hospital.
