A nonprofit group is embarking on a study to match pancreatic cancer patients with treatments, MIT's Technology Review reports.
The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network's Precision Promise study, which is to launch next year, is going to collect biopsy tumor samples from patients with pancreatic cancer for sequencing. Then, based on what that reveals, the patients will be placed in different treatment groups, PCAN's Lynn Matrisian tells Tech Review. Patients with BRCA mutations, for instance, would be given a treatment targeted to that mutation, while another treatment will be given to patients with high hyaluronan levels and the remainder of patients would then receive immunotherapy. It adds that the investigators plan to incorporate additional treatment arms as enrollment ramps up.
"Precision Promise is an opportunity to change the landscape of how we conduct pancreatic clinical trials," Victoria Manax Rutson, the chief medical officer at the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, says in a statement. "We will be able to offer options to patients based on the molecular profile of their tumor, rather than trying to fit them into a clinical trial that may not suit the needs of their disease."
Robert Comis, the co-chair of the ECOG-ACRIN Cancer Research Group, says researchers are increasingly examining whether different tumor types that harbor the same genetic mutations can be treated with the same therapies, Tech Review adds.