Promising new pancreatic cancer treatment discovered by HCI researchers

A study by researchers at Huntsman Cancer Institute (HCI, Salt Lake City, Utah) has been recently published in the journal ‘Nature Medicine’. The paper proposes a new therapeutic approach for patients suffering from pancreatic cancer that may be effective to treat the disease. It involves a combination drug therapy and has been studied in vitro, in vivo also in a human volunteer.

As the new treatment combines two drugs that are both registered for use by the Food and Drug Administration, the clinical trial (‘THREAD’) is now open at HCI soon to be followed by other US sties.

The novel method involves targeting two physiological process at the same time. Previous studies have focused on only one process and shown to be ineffective. One process is an impact of a mutation in a gene called ‘KRAS’ that sends constant signals that promote cells divisions resulting in uncontrolled tumour growth. Another process, autophagy, is a cell-level recycling of cells including pancreatic cancer cells.

The new HCI study used mouse models to investigate a drug response of combining the two drugs simultaneously and applied advanced imaging techniques (nanoScan PET/MRI, supplied by Mediso USA, Boston and nanoScan SPECT/CT, Mediso, Hungary installed  in HCI at the Center for Quantitative Cancer Imaging) to show the strong drug response.

 “We were able to observe that the combination of these two drugs — which, when used individually, don’t have much of an impact on the disease — appears to have a very potent impact on the growth of pancreatic cancer,” says McMahon, PhD, a cancer researcher at HCI and Professor of Dermatology. “We have observed this in the lab in petri dishes, then in mouse models, and now in a pancreatic cancer patient on a compassionate use basis. Indeed, we proceeded from a petri dish to a patient in less than two years — a timeline that is rarely seen in medical science.”

Preclinical imaging. Mice were anesthestized and injected by approximately 0.5 mCi of [18 F]-fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG). CT imaging was performed using a NanoScan SPECT/CT scanner followed by PET and MRI imaging using a NanoScan PET/MRI scanner (Mediso Medical Imaging, Budapest). The animal remained anesthetized and immoblized in a common MultiCell animal chamber to provide intrinsic spatial co-registration of CT, MRI, and PET images. T1-weighted Gradient Echo (GRE) images and T2-weighted 2D Fast Spin Echo (FSE) images were acquired prior to initiating a 20-minute PET emission scan at 60 minutes post-injection of FDG. (Figures from this paper are publicly accessible at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-019-0367-9)

At Mediso USA, we are proudly supporting researchers with state-of-the-art advanced imaging techniques in their efforts to shorten time from bench to clinic. Huntsman Cancer Institute Becomes has been the First Mediso Preclinical Imaging Center of Excellence in North America since 2015. They are the first USA site site using the nanoScan 3Tesla PET/MRI.