Earlier this week, a drug, Lynparza, that could make a major difference in reducing the risk of disease progression for some people with advanced pancreatic cancer — a disease notoriously difficult to treat — was cleared for use by the Federal Drug Administration, according to a press release from AstraZeneca, a company that, along with Merck, developed it. The FDA has confirmed the clearance, according to CBS News.
Much attention had been paid to pancreatic cancer over the past year as famous people such as Alex Trebek, host of “Jeopardy!,” and now Rep. John Lewis, have gone public with their diagnoses. This new approval offers a lot of promise for those facing advanced stages of the disease.
New Pancreatic Cancer Drug Gets Approval
- A PARP inhibitor called Lynparza (generic name: olaparib) was granted FDA approval for people with advanced pancreatic cancer and a mutation in the BRCA gene
- A PARP inhibitor is a class a drug that works by preventing cancer cells that have been damaged often during the course of chemotherapy from naturally healing themselves
- The drug was shown to increase the risk of disease progression by 47%
While the disease does still have a poor prognosis (it is the only major cancer with a five-year survival rate under 10%), there have been some really promising advances over the past couple of years..
What are PARP Inhibitors?
PARP inhibitors work by preventing cancer cells that have been damaged often during the course of chemotherapy from naturally healing themselves, and have shown significant promise in treating ovarian cancer and breast cancer. The POLO trial, which was presented at the annual American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting in June, was the first time a PARP inhibitor was been shown to reduce the risk of disease progression in pancreatic cancer.
One caveat worth noting is that the chance of experiencing side effects was much higher for those given Lynzpara (40%) than it was for those who were just treated with the chemo followed by a placebo (20%). The severity depends on the individual and the cancer, but often, the side effects for PARP inhibitors include anemia, gastrointestinal discomfort like nausea and vomiting, and fatigue.
The Future of Pancreatic Cancer
Still, the discovery and subsequent approval of Lynzpara for pancreatic cancer was definitely one of the biggest developments in cancer research in 2019. One of the reasons pancreatic cancer is particularly difficult to treat is because it is often diagnosed in advanced stages. The disease often presents no symptoms in early stages, so only about 20% of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer are even eligible to undergo surgery to try and remove the disease. So, any developments to treating advanced disease are quite a big deal in the pancreatic cancer community.
Dr. Anirban Maitra, co-leader of Pancreatic Cancer Moon Shot at MD Anderson Cancer Center, told SurvivorNet in a previous interview that in order to improve the prognosis for people with pancreatic cancer, a lot of work needs to be done in finding ways to detect the disease earlier.
“Each year in the United States about 53,000 patients get pancreatic cancer, and unfortunately, most will die from this disease within a few months to a year or so from the diagnosis,” Dr. Maitra said. “The reason for that is that most individuals, about 80%, will actually present with what we call advanced disease — which means that the cancer has either spread beyond the pancreas or into other organs like the liver … Of course this has an impact on the prognosis of the disease because patients who have advanced disease, the treatments that we have available for them, they work somewhat, but they don’t really do as well as we would like for them to.”
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