It’s the dog days of summer and time for some meaty controversy to read!

For the longest time there have been several cancer types which have been incredibly difficult to treat therapeutically.

Metastatic melanoma and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) both used to be in this category, as did glioblastoma and advanced pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC).

We have made great strides in changing the face (and more importantly outcomes!) for people with both metastatic melanoma and lung cancer, so what’s happening on the pancreatic cancer front?

The last two years gave certainly thrown up a series of disappointing clinical trial readouts such as RESOLVE, HALO–301, CanStemIIIP, and SEQUIOA, for example, where in each and every case the findings favoured the control arm of gemcitabine plus nab-paclitaxel over the experimental arm in terms of improving survival.  Not one of them was able to raise the bar and show a significant improvement over standard therapy, which is pretty disappointing.

So what can be done to change the face of PDAC?

If we want to improve further then we need to go back to basics and enhance not only our understanding of the funadamental biological mechansisms and processes, but also the models we use to interrogate the systems involved.

In this post, we look at six key new areas of research in PDAC and explain what we’ve learned and why they matter if we are to see new therapeutic developments arise from the ashes of the past…

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