Study Spots New Pancreatic Cancer Drug Target

MONDAY, July 2 (HealthDay News) -- New research may someday provide another treatment option for patients battling deadly pancreatic cancer.
The University of Cincinnati (UC) team knew that a cellular receptor known as the "RON receptor tyrosine kinase" is active in several cancers, including breast cancer.
In a study appearing in the July 1 issue of Cancer Research, they set out to determine if the receptor was also expressed in pancreatic cancer.
Pancreatic cancer will affect an estimated 37,000 Americans in 2007. It's survival rates are low -- only about 4 percent -- often because the cancer is not detected until it has spread.
In the UC study, the researchers found that the RON receptor was overexpressed in pancreatic cancer cells. In addition, blocking the receptor with targeted antibodies killed more cancer cells than standard drug treatment alone.
"A normal pancreas has very low levels of RON, but our study showed that as tumors progress, so does the level of RON expression in the pancreas cells -- and those overexpressed levels were maintained in metastases, the areas that the tumors spread to," Susan Waltz, an associate professor and director of the oncology research program in UC's surgery department, said in a prepared statement.
The researchers found that the RON receptor was present in 79 percent of primary pancreatic cancers and 83 percent of metastatic cancers -- cancers that have spread to other parts of the body.
"When cells become invasive," Waltz said, "we saw higher levels of RON expression that correlated with the aggressive nature of this disease and cancer metastasis. Clearly, this signaling pathway is associated with pancreatic cancer and merits further investigation."
These findings could be the beginning of the development of a new treatment for pancreatic cancer.
"Our findings suggest that combining antibodies that block the RON receptor and the standard chemotherapy drugs might stop progression of pancreatic cancer more effectively," said Waltz. "RON could be a promising molecular target for future cancer drug development."
More research will be needed before RON receptor blockers become available for human testing, though, Waltz stressed.
More information
The U.S. National Cancer Institute has more about pancreatic cancer.