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- Advanced Pancreatic Cancer- “High Rates of Tumor Shrinkage”
Advanced Pancreatic Cancer- “High Rates of Tumor Shrinkage”
“High Rates of Tumor Shrinkage” is a Great First Step for Advance Pancreatic Cancer Patients-But Only a First Step-
The top two studies linked and excerpted below are from 2017. Years later, combining paclitaxel and gemcitbine is probably pretty common. Or it should be…
Skip ahead a half-dozen or so years. Pancreatic cancer is still an aggressive cancer that conventional oncology has difficulty treating.
Consider taking an integrative approach to therapy. According to the last study below, curcumin kills pancreatic cancer by itself and enhances the pancreatic cancer killing activity of gemcitabine.
For the record, curcumin also kills my cancer, multiple myeloma, an “incurable blood cancer” that I was diagnosed with in early 1994.
There are real, measurable positive results for pancreatic cancer patients in the study linked and excerpted below. But like all studies, a careful study of the facts must be applied.
First and foremost, adding a toxic chemo regimen to two other toxic chemo regimens may cause a great deal of collateral damage aka side effects. In order to minimize this toxicity, consider both integrative and complementary therapies shown to reduce collateral damage and enhancing the efficacy of chemotherapy.
Further,
- both of the studies below are small-
- both of the studies compare their results to current standard-of-care for pancreatic cancer- a low bar
- neither of the studies combine conventional therapies such as radiation and or surgery- they are not designed to…
- As you probably know, conventional therapies have limited efficacy on pancreatic cancer. There are evidence-based, non-conventional therapies for pancreatic cancer that are cytotoxic to PC individually and/or work synergistically with conventional therapies.
I am a cancer survivor and cancer coach. Though my cancer is very different from pancreatic cancer, it is considered incurable by conventional oncology. 20 plus years of experience has taught me that conventional oncology can be limited when it comes to certain cancers. I learned to think outside the conventional oncology box.
Have you been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer? What stage? Scroll down the page, post a question or comment and I will reply to you ASAP.
Thank you,
David Emerson
- Cancer Survivor
- Cancer Coach
- Director PeopleBeatingCancer
Recommended Reading:
- C-B-D Enhances Chemo for Pancreatic Cancer
- Pancreatic Cancer, Blue-Green Algae
- Intravenous Vitamin C, Curcumin as Integrative Pancreatic Cancer Therapies
- Ellagic Acid, PE, Evidence-based Integrative Pancreatic Cancer Therap
High rate of tumor shrinkage among pancreatic cancer patients
“Adding cisplatin to standard gemcitabine/nab-paclitaxel drug treatment provided a very high rate of tumor shrinkage for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer…
These statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements in overall response and survival rates resulted from a phase Ib/II clinical study…
“After just three treatment cycles, we saw tumor markers plummet and some patients’ tumors shrink significantly in just nine weeks…”
After treatment, two patients had no evidence of disease and are alive over three years after starting this regimen. This is very rare with traditional chemotherapy…”
Of the 24 evaluable patients (those whose response to a treatment could be measured because enough information was collected) who were enrolled in the study:
- Eleven patients are still alive. The median overall survival rate of 16.5 months exceeds the historical average survival of six-12 months with standard chemotherapy.
- Seventeen of 24 patients — 71 percent — had a reduction in tumor size of at least 30 percent.
- Two of those 17 patients had a complete response — no detectable tumor.”
A modified regimen of biweekly gemcitabine and nab-paclitaxel in patients with metastatic pancreatic cancer is both tolerable and effective: a retrospective analysis
“Treatment with nab-paclitaxel with gemcitabine demonstrates a survival advantage when compared with single-agent gemcitabine. However, the combination is associated with significant toxicities, leading to a high rate of drug discontinuation. We implemented a modified regimen of gemcitabine and nab-paclitaxel (mGNabP) in an attempt to minimize toxicities while maintaining efficacy…
A modified regimen of biweekly nab-paclitaxel with gemcitabine is associated with a lower cost, acceptable toxicity profile and appears to be relatively effective in pancreatic cancer…”
Protein-bound paclitaxel
“Protein-bound paclitaxel, also known as nanoparticle albumin–bound paclitaxel or nab-paclitaxel, is an injectableformulation of paclitaxel used to treat breast cancer, lung cancer and pancreatic cancer, among others… In this formulation, paclitaxel is bonded to albumin as a delivery vehicle.[4] It is manufactured and sold in the United States… where it is designated as an orphan drug as first-line treatment, in combination with gemcitabine, for the orphan disease “metastatic adenocarcinoma of the pancreas.”[5]“
Curcumin enhances anti‑cancer efficacy of either gemcitabine or docetaxel on pancreatic cancer cells
“Curcumin is a natural compound extracted from turmeric (Curcuma longa), which has been reported to be a promising anti‑cancer drug in various human cancers. However, the effects of combination treatment of curcumin with gemcitabine or docetaxel on pancreatic cancer remains elusive.
In the present study, the combinatory effects of curcumin with either gemcitabine or docetaxel on the proliferation, apoptosis, migration as well as invasion of PC cells were investigated. Calcusyn software was used to determine whether curcumin has is synergistic with gemcitabine or docetaxel.
Combination index values from combinational use were all lower than 1, indicating the synergism of curcumin with gemcitabine or docetaxel on PC cells in vitro. EdU assay showed that curcumin could enhance the ability of gemcitabine or docetaxel to inhibit the proliferation of PC cells.
Furthermore, the results from transmission electron microscope, DAPI staining experiments and western blot analysis revealed that curcumin may trigger apoptosis of PC cells via PARP/caspase‑3 signaling pathway and reinforced pro‑apoptotic ability of either gemcitabine or docetaxel.
In addition, curcumin exhibited marked suppressive ability on metastasis of PC cells by wound healing and matrigel‑transwell assay. Mechanistically, upregulation of TIMP1/TIMP2 with concomitant downregulation of MMP2/MMP9/N‑cadherin proteins may be involved in this process. In conclusion, curcumin showed synergistic anti‑cancer effects with either gemcitabine or docetaxel on PC cells…”