Researchers have developed a new three-drug treatment that completely eliminated pancreatic tumors in mice and stopped them from coming back. This is a major advance for pancreatic cancer, a disease with a five-year survival rate of about 13%.
The therapy works by blocking three critical pathways that pancreatic tumors use to survive and grow. It targets the KRAS mutation that drives most pancreatic cancers, a related growth pathway, and the STAT3 protein, which acts as a backup route that helps tumors resist treatment.
In multiple mouse models, including those using human tumor samples, the treatment caused total tumor regression and kept the cancer from returning for at least 200 days. The therapy was also well tolerated, with no major side effects or organ damage observed in the mice.
The drug combination includes afatinib, an FDA-approved lung cancer drug, daraxonrasib, an experimental drug in clinical trials, and a new STAT3 inhibitor. Researchers stress that more work is needed to confirm safety and effectiveness in humans, and future studies will focus on refining the treatment and preparing for possible clinical trials.