Pancreatic cancer treatment heads in promising direction

Despite the disappointing history of drug development in pancreatic cancer, the current therapeutic pipeline and clinical development is headed in a promising direction, a new report notes.

According to data and analytics company GlobalData, drug development has been highly challenging and replete with failure stories of pipeline agents investigated in pancreatic cancer, despite treatment algorithms being dramatically improved in many oncology indications. The very low success rate in clinical development stems to a great extent from pancreatic tumors being highly resistant to treatment. This is attributed to thick stromal tissue within pancreatic tumors which in turn contributes to immuno-suppression and limited access of therapies to the tumor site.

Volkan Gunduz, oncology and hematology senior analyst at GlobalData, says: “While previous clinical development programs directly targeted tumor cells, current clinical development includes Phase III programs which are specifically or co-targeting stromal tissue along with the tumor itself.”