IMAGE: Fruit flies can be used as a genetically tractable experimental model to study the effects of chemotherapy drugs on pain. This picture shows a fruit fly larvae with peripheral sensory neurons specifically labeled… view more
Credit: Nina Boiko
Research into cancer can provide new insight into how this disease works and how it can be stopped. The Experimental Biology 2018 meeting (EB 2018) will showcase innovative research that could lead to new ways to treat and prevent cancer.
Potential treatment for pancreatic cancer
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), which makes up 90 percent of all pancreatic cancers, has a 5-year survival rate of less than five percent. The cancer is not only difficult to detect but treatment is often complicated by mutations in the p53 tumor suppressor gene that make the cancer cells resistant to chemotherapy. Researchers from the Human BioMolecular Research Institute, University of California San Diego and ChemRegen, Inc. developed a new compound that could be useful for treating pancreatic cancer. They previously showed that the compound killed PDAC cells with and without mutant p53 and strongly inhibited tumor growth in an invasive PDAC tumor mouse model. In new work, the researchers showed that the compound works by uniquely targeting
Article originally posted at 
www.eurekalert.org
