New trick for ‘old’ drug brings hope for pancreatic cancer patients
Cancer Research UK scientists have found a new use for an old drug by showing that it shrinks a particular type of pancreatic cancer tumour and stops it spreading, according to researchpublished in Gut*. The scientists, at the Cancer Research UK Beatson Institute and the University of Glasgow, treated mice with pancreatic cancers caused by known genetic faults with the drug rapamycin**. Previous clinical trials did not find this drug to be effective as a treatment for pancreatic cancers when it was given to all patients with different forms of the disease. But the team’s findings show that a particular type of pancreatic tumour – caused by a fault in the gene PTEN, which is involved in cell growth – may be responsive to the drug after all. …