Gemcitabine is the active ingredient in a drug that is used to treat pancreatic cancer that is advanced or has spread. It is also used together with other drugs to treat breast cancer that has spread, advanced ovarian cancer, and non-small cell lung cancer that is advanced or has spread. It is also being studied in the treatment of other types of cancer. Gemcitabine blocks the cell from making DNA and may kill cancer cells. It is a type of antimetabolite
November is National Pancreatic Cancer Awareness month. This year alone, more than 56,000 Americans will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic tumors are particularly aggressive and hard to treat "due to a mutational profile that makes it resistant to therapies that work better for other tumor types," explains Angela Alistar, MD, medical director of GI Oncology at Morristown Medical Center.
Certain fungi move from the gut to the pancreas, expand their population more than a thousand-fold, and encourage pancreatic cancer growth, a new study finds.
A big way chemotherapy works is by prompting cancer cells to commit suicide, and scientists have found a pathway the most common lung cancer walks to avoid death.
Pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a lethal malignancy that most often is resistant to chemotherapy. Researchers have been searching for ways to increase the sensitivity of the tumors to cancer-fighting drugs.
One of the major obstacles in the treatment of pancreatic cancer is the 'defense wall' that is formed around the tumor.
While weeding in her north Seattle garden, Miggie Olsson discusses how she, as a patient, became a unicorn.
Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers, with patients surviving on average less than a year once the disease has spread.
Researchers have conducted clinical trials with a new drug targeting pancreatic cancer and the initial results are promising.
A clinical trial testing a new drug in pancreatic cancer had promising initial results, report researchers from the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center.
Unlike many other cancers, most pancreatic tumors are rock hard.
Scientists have found a way to target and knock out a single protein that they have discovered is widely involved in pancreatic cancer cell growth, survival and invasion.
The enzyme ribonucleotide reductase is a bottleneck for cancer cell growth. Scientists at Winship Cancer Institute of Emory University have identified a way of targeting ribonucleotide reductase that may avoid the toxicity of previous approaches, informing focused drug discovery efforts.
Administration of the EGLN inhibitor FG-4592 prior to ablative radiotherapy provided protection against fatal gastrointestinal bleeding and improved survival in a mouse model of unresectable pancreatic cancer.
A frontline chemotherapy drug given to patients with pancreatic cancer is made less effective because similar compounds released by tumor-associated immune cells block the drug's action, research led by the University of Michigan Rogel Cancer Center found.
Of all gastrointestinal cancers, pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive. Because of this, it has a very low 5-year survival rate of just 5% and a median survival time below 6 months. Additionally, treatment is difficult, with only surgery shown to provide a cure. However, the vast majority of patients have tumors that cannot be removed surgically or their cancer is too advanced or spread too far to be treatable.
Gemcitabine given in combination with nab-paclitaxel is the standard of care for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer. This practice, however, rests on data obtained from several recent clinical trials enrolling patients with pancreatic cancer who skewed younger and in better overall condition than most.
A systematic review of research has revealed that the toxic effects on the lung of drugs commonly taken to treat a range of common conditions is much more widespread than thought.
Neoadjuvant erlotinib benefits selected epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-mutated patients who undergo complete resection of stage IIIA-N2 stage non-small cell lung cancer(NSCLC), shows a randomized study comparing erlotinib with gemcitabine plus cisplatin as neoadjuvant treatment, presented at the ESMO 2018 Congress in Munich.
Sarcoma patients show great openness to the use of complementary alternative medicines (CAMs) for supportive care, but they are poorly informed about safety issues and risk of interactions with anti-cancer drugs, a study to be presented at ESMO 2018 reported.
A treatment for highly aggressive and commonly fatal pancreatic cancer is being developed, reports a University of Houston researcher who has designed a new medicine that can inhibit two of the major pathways of the deadly disease.