Gene Fights Pancreatic Cancer—Until It Doesn't

Pancreatic cancer succeeds by shutting down a gene that works to slow the growth of the disease, a breakthrough discovery that could lead to new treatments for one of the world's deadliest cancers. "Pancreatic cancer has the lowest survival of all the 20 common cancers," says Dr. Maria Hatziapostolou, a researcher at Nottingham Trent University in the UK, per the Guardian. Patients are often diagnosed in the advanced stage. More than half die within three months and fewer than 7% survive beyond five years, per a release. Given little improvement over time, "it's extremely important that we find new ways to better understand this disease, how it spreads and why it is so aggressive," says Hatziapostolou.

She and colleagues analyzed pancreatic cancer tissue as well as healthy tissue, finding pancreatic cancers caused molecules in the Hepatocyte Nuclear Factor 4A (HNF4A) gene to switch off. The HNF4A gene normally helps the body's organs function. It is also "a novel tumor suppressor in pancreatic cancer, regulating cancer growth and aggressiveness," according to the study published in the journal Gastro Hep Advances. Yet the gene "was significantly shut down in the very early stages of the cancer, declining further as the disease spread," per the release. "We found that certain modifications, called DNA methylation, are added on the specific gene to shut it down," says Hatziapostolou.

Once HNF4A's protection was removed, tumors were found to grow at a fast rate. "Loss of HNF4A drives pancreatic cancer development and aggressiveness and we now know correlates with poor patient survival," Hatziapostolou notes. The good news is that this "new understanding and knowledge of how the cancer behaves will hopefully help pave the way for potential new treatments in the future," Hatziapostolou says. Chris Macdonald, who heads research at Pancreatic Cancer UK, which funded the study, similarly noted the work "could lead to the development of more effective treatment options," per the Telegraph. (More pancreatic cancer stories.)