A glimmer of hope that could lead to a major medical advance. A team of researchers from the University of San Diego (United States) recently announced that it had discovered a new early detection track for pancreatic cancer.
In a study published on Cell Reports and relayed in particular by The Times of India, scientists explain how they managed to identify certain genetic characteristics which could ultimately help doctors determine upstream which patients are most likely to develop this type of pathology.
A constant progression disease …
As the Indian media recalls, pancreatic cancer has been a major health issue for several years on the planet’s scale. In 2021, no less than 508,533 new cases were diagnosed around the world, and 505,752 deaths linked to this disease were identified.
In France as elsewhere, pancreatic cancer has continued to progress in recent decades. In 2023, 15,991 new cases were thus identified in our country, four times more than in 1990, according to Dr Antoine Hollebecque, oncologist at the Gustave Roussy Institute.
… and difficult to diagnose at the early stage
One of the main problems related to pancreatic cancer is that it remains difficult to diagnose at an early stage, and therefore to treat enough early, because its symptoms are generally mild or absent in the first stages of the disease.
This is particularly true for pancreatic canal adenocarcinoma (ACP), the most common and aggressive pancreatic cancer. According to The Times of India, the average survival rate at five years for this type of tumor is “less than 10%”. And for good reason: the ACP most often presents no symptoms at an early stage.
To get around this pitfall, researchers at the University of San Diego were closely interested in the molecular mechanisms for the development of pancreatic cancer, with the aim of identifying certain genetic factors conducive to the disease.
More specifically, the team of the pathology department has focused on a protein called Stat3, activated in stress or inflammation conditions in the body, and which then triggers a chain of biological reactions promoting growth, adaptation, spread and resistance to tumor treatments.
A genetic imprint of precancerous activity
“Since Stat3 plays such an important role in many cancers and that it controls so many genes, this has encouraged us to find out which genes in particular are associated with development, progression and resistance to cancer medication,” explains David Cheresh, one of the co-authors of the study, quoted by The Times of India.
At the end of their research, scientists have thus managed to identify ten genes which are activated by Stat3 in the event of stress. The latter form what researchers have called the “stress” signature, a sort of genetic imprint of precancerous activity.
More or less likely to develop the disease according to your genetic signature
Even more interesting, the work carried out by the team of pathologists allowed them to see in the conclusion of their study than certain “subpopulations of patients (…) are more likely to respond according to their expression of the genes of the stress signature”.
“A large number of patients are what we call ‘inductible’ for these stress genes,” confirms David Cheresh, still quoted by The Times of India. In other words, these people therefore not only have more risks than the rest of the population to develop pancreatic cancer, but also to present physiologically resistance to therapies that will be used to treat them once the disease is diagnosed at an advanced stage.
A promising track for more effective treatments
The identification of people with a stress signature conducive to pancreatic cancer could thus constitute a first step towards a method of detection upstream of the disease. Ultimately, pathologists hope that this genetic identification will be able to “predict the future behavior of the tumor and develop more effective treatment strategies”.
The perspective is all the more promising that this anticipation could make it possible to prescribe molecules to patients capable of blocking cancer at an early stage. “Knowing this genetic signature in patients could be precious because there are drugs used to treat other diseases that block the activation of stat3 on the market and also inhibit the expression of stress genes in cancer cells”, details David Cheresh, convinced of the immense potential of the discovery made by his team.