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New \u2018playbook\u2019 describes how disease is driven by a complex network of factors, suggesting that combination-based treatments may be more successful in improving survival rates<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
Progress on treating pancreatic cancer will depend on smarter, combination-based treatments that target multiple areas, the authors of a new \u2018playbook\u2019 on the disease have said.<\/p>\n
Researchers at the Trinity St James\u2019s Cancer Institute (TSJCI) have published a major new review on pancreatic cancer, a disease with a five-year survival rate of just 13 per cent.<\/p>\n
Rather than treating pancreatic cancer as a single problem, the paper describes how it is driven by a complex network of factors, including: genetic mutations, the tumour microenvironment, immune system evasion, metabolic changes, tumour-nerve interactions, and even the microbiome.<\/p>\n
By integrating the findings from hundreds of studies across these multiple areas, the review highlights how these processes work together, not in isolation, to make pancreatic cancer so difficult to treat.<\/p>\n
As a result, authors believe that single-drug approaches to treating the disease are unlikely to succeed. Instead, they argue that progress will depend on smarter, combination-based treatments that target multiple hallmarks of the disease at once. This shift in thinking could have important implications for how clinical trials are designed and how new therapies are developed.<\/p>\n
\u201cDespite decades of research, outcomes for pancreatic cancer patients have improved only marginally,\u201d said senior author Stephen Maher, Professor in Translational Oncology.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis paper helps explain why. It also provides a road map for designing the next generation of treatments, ones that reflect the true complexity of the disease.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pancreatic cancer has the worst survival rate of any major cancer. Late detection, aggressive tumour biology, limited treatment options and a lack of research funding has meant progress has been frustratingly slow.<\/p>\n
By publishing a comprehensive \u2018playbook\u2019 of the disease, Trinity researchers are highlighting how multiple biological systems interact to drive its growth, which they hope will inspire new research into the cancer.<\/p>\n
The comprehensive review applies the most up-to-date \u2018Hallmarks of Cancer\u2019 framework (a globally recognised generic model describing the essential traits of cancer, first developed in 2000 by Douglas Hanahan and Robert Weinberg<\/em>) to pancreatic cancer, in unprecedented detail.<\/p>\n By integrating the findings from hundreds of studies across these multiple areas, the review highlights how these processes work together, not in isolation, to make pancreatic cancer so difficult to treat.<\/p>\n \u201cPancreatic cancer is not driven by one pathway, it\u2019s a highly coordinated system,\u201d said lead author Dr Laura Kane.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019ve done is bring all of that complexity together into a single, usable framework. By showing how these different mechanisms connect, we can start to see where the real vulnerabilities of the disease may lie.\u201d<\/p>\n Read the study: The Hallmarks of Pancreatic Cancer \u2013 Cancer Letters<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n New \u2018playbook\u2019 describes how disease is driven by a complex network of factors, suggesting that combination-based treatments may be more successful in improving survival rates Progress on treating pancreatic cancer will depend on smarter, combination-based treatments that target multiple areas, the authors of a new \u2018playbook\u2019 on the disease have said. Researchers at the Trinity […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":88350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_daextam_enable_autolinks":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/GettyImages-1402639208-pancreatic-cancer-620.webp.webp","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/88350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diyhaven858.wasmer.app\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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