Some pancreatic cancer treatments may be going after wrong targets

Thursday, May 22, 2014 - 19:21 in Health & Medicine

New research represents a significant change in the understanding of how pancreatic cancer grows – and how it might be defeated. Unlike other types of cancer, pancreatic cancer produces a lot of scar tissue and inflammation. For years, researchers believed that this scar tissue, called desmoplasia, helped the tumor grow, and they’ve designed treatments to attack this. But new research finds that when you eliminate desmoplasia, tumors grow even more quickly and aggressively. In the study, mice in which the desmoplasia was eliminated developed tumors earlier and died sooner.

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