PHILADELPHIA -- Cancer researchers at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia see promise in personalized medicine to help crack the code on improving diagnosis and treatment options for pancreatic cancer.

Pancreatic cancer accounts for 3% of all cancers and a disproportionate 7% of cancer deaths. That's partly because there's no routine screening to test for the disease whose symptoms can be mistaken as indigestion or the flu. As a result, pancreatic cancer is often not detected until it has spread to other organs and become more difficult to treat.

But researchers are increasingly learning how each person's cancer is unique and how to tailor treatment to their disease's profile. They are also finding genetic links to pancreatic cancer that could help detect it sooner and lead to new treatment options.

For instance, researchers are learning that the BRCA gene mutations most commonly associated with breast cancer also increase the risk of developing pancreatic cancer. Understanding the role of genetics in pancreatic cancer could help doctors monitor for the disease more vigilantly, and influence the treatment approach they recommend.

Sanjay Reddy, division chief for surgical oncology at Fox Chase Cancer Center and co-director of Fox Chase's pancreatic cancer institute, spoke with The Inquirer about the latest in pancreatic cancer treatment and research. The interview has been edited lightly for length and clarity.

What are the screening and preventive care options for pancreatic cancer?

There's really no screening test that we have available for pancreatic cancer for the general population.

In pancreatic cancer, there are oftentimes few symptoms, or when symptoms end up arising, it's almost to the point where the cancer may have metastasized. Simple things like weight loss, nausea, vomiting and abdominal pain can all be symptoms, but those are things anyone can have.

You have to be really attentive to your body and seek out preventive medicine. Go to your primary care, get some labs.

Some families may be at higher risk genetically, and in those situations you can justify imaging or more regular monitoring. This is one of the reasons it's important for you to know your family history.

What should people know about BRCA gene mutations and pancreatic cancer?

The BRCA mutation has historically been associated with breast cancer, but what we've learned is that there are other cancers that you may be susceptible to with that mutation, and pancreatic cancer is one of them.

What we know about that disease is that when you have that mutation, certain chemotherapies, particularly platinum-based chemotherapies, are particularly sensitive to those types of patients.

One patient had a BRCA mutation and we knew that she was sensitive to platinum drugs. So before we did any sort of surgical intervention, she underwent chemotherapy with a three-drug regiment with platinum. She had a marvelous response. When we took out her tumor, we calculated how much dead tumor there is versus live tumor, and there was like 100% tumor kill.

Those are the patients that will ultimately have, we hope, the longest survival.

Are you seeing any diagnosis trends in pancreatic cancer?

This is a disease that really affects a wide range of patients, age-wise. I've seen patients as young as their late 20s, early 30s, to patients as old as into their 80s. I think that genetic predisposition is potentially playing a role in detecting patients earlier.

At the same time, what I think has been the biggest help in diagnosis is spreading awareness. There have been so many more high profile people in the news who have been willing to share their diagnosis and their journey, and I think it's bringing to light a lot of these subtle symptoms for patients to be more proactive in thinking about.

What's new and exciting in pancreatic cancer research?

There's a lot of emerging thought and excitement about biomarkers [molecules, proteins or bits of genes that can be linked to a certain cancer] and figuring out ways to detect pancreatic cancer earlier.

We have a very old blood test that we've been using forever, CA 19-9, [which measures a protein that, in high amounts, could be a sign of pancreatic cancer]. That alone is not a marker for pancreatic cancer, but that's one test we have in our arsenal.

The hope is we can develop better circulating type blood tests that may detect cells much earlier.

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