A team of researchers at Imperial College Lonon in the UK have carried out studies that suggest it may be possible to use gene editing to treat pancreatic cancer, reports the Evening Standard.
Pancreatic cancer is the fifth most common cause of death from cancer in the UK, where it leads to the death of 8,700 people per year. It often exhibits very few symptoms in the early stages of the disease, which means that patients and doctors often fail to identify it early on. At later stages, people may begin to notice weight loss, jaundice, and pain the in back or stomach, among other symptoms. Late diagnoses are usually associated with worse prognoses because cancer becomes more difficult to treat. Four in five people with pancreatic cancer are diagnosed after it has spread to affect other organs, and therefore are unlikely to be eligible for surgery. This contributes to the cancer’s poor survival rates, with only 5% of patients surviving five years or more after diagnosis.
This means that research into developing treatments that are effective on late-stage pancreatic cancer is important. The team at Imperial College London used the gene-editing tool CRISPR to carry out laboratory tests on mice with pancreatic cancer. They found that by removing mircoRNA molecules that are involved in gene expression, they could slow the growth and spread of cancer cells.
Following this discovery, the team plan to investigate whether it is possible to use a similar technique to stop the development of a stroma (often called the ‘armour’ of a tumour), which would make chemotherapy a more effective treatment for patients.
The study was funded by the charity Pancreatic Cancer UK. The head of research at the charity, Leanne Reynolds, said,
“The potential positive impact which these results could have on patients’ lives in years to come is significant.”
