A study led by researchers at Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins Kimmel Cancer Center found a new technique cut the recurrence rate of pancreatic cancer to 5%.
The study, presented at the September American Society for Radiation Oncology annual meeting, studied the effects of using targeted radiation during surgery in 20 patients with borderline resectable or locally advanced pancreatic cancer. Patients received presurgical chemotherapy and radiation targeted to shrink the tumors away from the blood vessels, then during surgery received another dose of targeted radiation.
Researchers learned that pancreatic cancer cells spread along nerves near the pancreas to a fatty, nerve-dense triangular area just above the organ, which they called the “Baltimore triangle.”
This method reduced pancreatic cancer recurrence rates from 47% to 12% at two years post-surgery.
“The combination of intraoperative radiation and targeting the Baltimore triangle has gotten us to a 5% recurrence rate, which is the lowest-ever reported recurrence rate around the pancreas for this population of patients to our knowledge,” Amol Narang, MD, associate professor of radiation oncology and molecular radiation sciences at Johns Hopkins, said in an Oct. 28 system news release. “But I think we can drop to 0% in our next study.”
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