Professor and researcher Marie-Josée Boucher, with the help of her colleagues Steve Jean and Lee-Hwa Tai, recently discovered these advances in her laboratory at the Research Institute of Cancer at the University of Sherbrooke, where she conducts basic research on pancreatic cancer for about fifteen years.
Essentially, Dr. Boucher that by combining two treatment methods it was possible to reduce resistance to chemotherapy in pancreatic cancer, a problem faced by patients with this type of cancer.
In particular, his research showed that treating this disease with “a standard chemotherapy drug, gemcitabine, while blocking the function of the transcription factor EB (TFEB)” is a strategy that shows promising results, according to a press release from the University of Sherbrooke.
“The combination of these two treatments makes it possible to significantly reduce not only the growth of pancreatic cancer cells, but also their ability to develop tumors,” we adds.
Professor Boucher does not hide the fact that this is a beginning, an embryonic stage, but that the results are encouraging and could even lead to difficulties in later discoveries.
“This discovery is a first step. Preclinical validation experiments will be essential. “It will also be interesting to test whether targeting TFEB can also increase the response of pancreatic cancer cells to other chemotherapy drugs used in the clinic,” she says.
According to the University of Sherbrooke, one in 68 people in Canada, or 1.5% of the population, will die from pancreatic cancer. According to Statistics Canada, the net one-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer in patients aged 15 to 44 was 48.7%. For those aged 85 to 99, this rate fell to 11.2%.