New Hope for Pancreatic Cancer Treatment - Targeting cancer cells that like sweets

Pancreatic cancer is an intractable cancer known for its rapid progression and poor prognosis. While the five-year survival rate in Japan is 60% for all cancers, it is very low for pancreatic cancer, around 10%. (Economic analyst Takuro Morinaga also had this pancreatic cancer.)

A research team from Okayama University, the University of Toyama, and other universities has jointly developed a new treatment for a particularly intractable type of pancreatic cancer.

Targeting cancer cells that prefer sweet foods by studying their genes

The research involved improving boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT), a type of radiation therapy.

BNCT is a therapy that uses the principle that neutrons hitting a substance called boron cause nuclear fission. By administering boron into the body, allowing cancer cells to take it up, and then irradiating them with neutrons, only the cancer cells can be destroyed.

In conventional BNCT, a drug that combines boron with BPA, a type of amino acid, is used. However, when the research team examined the genes of pancreatic cancer cells, they found that there were few proteins that served as "sinks" for BPA, and that the effect was not sufficient.

The research team then focused on the characteristics of pancreatic cancer cells. Pancreatic cancer is known to have a high concentration of the tumor marker CA19-9, and it was found that refractory pancreatic cancer cells with high levels of this marker tend to prefer glucose (glucose).

Based on this finding, the research team developed a glucose-attached boron drug, G-BSH.

Effects Confirmed in Mouse Experiments

When G-BSH was used in mouse experiments, it was confirmed that the uptake of boron into refractory pancreatic cancer cells increased 8 to 10 times compared to that with conventional BPA.

Furthermore, BNCT using G-BSH was shown to be superior to conventional BNCT in reducing the tumor size of refractory pancreatic cancer.

Future Issues and Prospects

The results of this research offer new hope for the treatment of pancreatic cancer.

Hiroyuki Michigami, deputy director of the Okayama University Research Center for Neutron Science and Technology, and representative of the research team, said, "There are two types of pancreatic cancer, those that 'like' sweet foods and those that do not. We were able to show for the first time in the world that the BNCT treatment strategy, which examines the genes and uses boron drugs to treat the cancer according to its preference, is useful," he said.

The research team plans to develop a more effective boron drug for clinical trials in the next five to ten years.

Pancreatic cancer is an intractable cancer that progresses quickly and has a poor prognosis, but the development of new treatment methods such as this one is expected to improve treatment outcomes.
With more methods like this to approach pancreatic cancer, which has been difficult to treat until now, patients in the future will have more options and can aim for a higher chance of survival!
Let's look forward to the future!

What the results of this research will bring

The results of this research could be applied not only to pancreatic cancer treatment but also to the treatment of other intractable cancers.

Further research and development is expected to make a significant contribution to overcoming cancer in the future.

Reference Information

Okayama University Neutron Medical Research Center: http://www.okayama-u.ac.jp/index_e.html

University of Toyama: https://www.u-toyama.ac.jp/

National Cancer Center: https://www.ncc.go.jp/