Author Archives: pancreatica
The Enzyme Returns: L-asparaginase encased in red blood cells for pancreatic cancer
In late March 2017, the French biotech firm Erytech presented results of a IIb clinical trial of eryaspase (trade name: GRASPA) which is the enzyme l-asparaginase encapsulated in red blood cells as added to gemcitabine or FOLFIRINOX treatment regimens for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer (ductal adenocarcinoma of the pancreas), versus these standard therapies alone. […]
Long-term Results from Adjuvant Chemoradiation plus Interferon-α for Pancreatic Cancer
The radiation component of adjuvant chemoradiation after surgery for ductal adenocarcinoma of the pancreas (pancreatic cancer) took a turn toward controversy beginning about year 2000 with results of the Gastrointestinal Tract Cancer Cooperative Group of the EORTC demonstrating minimal survival improvement of adjuvant chemoradiation over chemotherapy alone (1999). These findings were punctuated with the release […]
Better Living Through Chemotherapy? Effects of treatment on pancreatic cancer patients
One of the observations that physicians often made when the standard of care treatment typically consisted of the chemotherapy drug agent of gemcitabine alone, was that many patients with pancreatic cancer (ductal adenocarcinoma of the pancreas) seemed to feel better after the initiation of treatment. In the past five years with the since widely deployed […]