Gift Cancer Research & Know The Signs & Symptoms of Pancreatic Cancer
NOVEMBER 2021
'My name is Tom Murphy, but this piece is not about me. I instead want to share with you a few words about my late wife Mary who I lost to pancreatic cancer six years ago.
We met when I was 18 and she was 19, and at 20 and 21 respectively, we married. We grew old together and now I'm alone because of this awful cancer.
On her 60th birthday I surprised her when I told her I was taking her out for dinner, but when we arrived at the hotel all five of our kids were there with their partners and our grandkids. I whispered to her ‘top this next year for my 60th', little did I know she wouldn't be with me for mine.
She got sick the following month which was March. She was in and out of doctors and hospitals, but it wasn't until September that she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and she left me on the 20th of November 2015.
Pancreatic cancer is an awful thing, I wouldn't wish that sort of death on my worst enemy. There is nothing I wouldn't do to try and help find a cure. So next year, on June the 11th and 12th 2022, I will be doing a 24-hour spinathon on a stationary bike to try and raise funds for pancreatic cancer research through Breakthrough Cancer Research. I will be doing the entire 24 hours myself with 10-minute breaks every few hours to take on fuel and change shorts! I will have different buddy cyclists doing two hours each throughout the 24 hours. So, I hope that, if you can, you can donate to this very worthy cause next year and help me to raise much-needed funds for pancreatic cancer research.' Tom Murphy, Co. Meath
Do you have personal or professional experience with prostate cancer? If so, we would love to hear from you.
IMPROVER (Involving Men with Prostate Cancer in Engaged Research) is a national survey funded by the Irish Research Council, led by Associate Professor Antoinette Perry, University College Dublin in conjunction with us here at Breakthrough Cancer Research and the Irish Cancer Society.
Prostate cancer is the most common non-skin cancer among men in Ireland. One in seven men in Ireland will be diagnosed with prostate cancer over the course of their lifetime. Early detection of the aggressive form of the disease is vital to save lives.
The aim of this survey and study is to understand the opinions and needs of patients and healthcare professionals regarding the detection and diagnosis of prostate cancer. This information will help inform the development of a new urine test for aggressive prostate cancer, epiCaPture, and hopes to improve the outcome for people with prostate cancer. If this research is applicable to you, we would be grateful if you could spare a few minutes to take this survey.
November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month. Take the time to familiarise yourself with the signs of symptoms. Early detection and diagnosis plays such an important role in positive patient outcomes.
Investigator Led Trails On The Horizon For Pancreatic Cancer
Over the past two years, through collaboration between Breakthrough Cancer Research and Dr. David Linehan of the Wilmot Cancer Institute in Rochester, New York, lead researcher Joseph Murphy, and his team, have been investigating novel strategies for harnessing the patient’s immune system to fight pancreatic cancer. This research involves targeting features of pancreatic tumours known to prevent recognition by the immune system.
The main strategy is to harness the immune system to fight this deadly disease using a combination of immunotherapy and radiation therapy. Within this strategy, the lab focuses on a subset of cells within pancreas tumours that cause immunosuppression. They have recently found that a specific type of immune cell invades tumours after radiation therapy and may be involved in shutting off the immune response.
Currently, they are attempting to understand how these cells invade, and are also testing new drugs that prevent this. The hope is that this early study will eventually lead to better responses in patients receiving both radiation and surgery.
Another key part of this research is not only on removing suppressive cells but also on re-educating immune cells residing within tumours so that they can be re-purposed to fight the tumour. This can be achieved with newer forms of radiation therapy that are highly targetable, which ‘wakes up’ the immune cells that are dormant and causes them to attack the tumour. They have coupled this radiation therapy with a molecule called a cytokine. When these cytokines are delivered in high doses to the tumour using specialised drug delivery platforms they are highly effective at ‘educating’ the local immune system, resulting in significant decreases in tumour size in the pre-clinical model. This data is very exciting and will be tested in clinical trials that are starting very soon!
This research is directly responsible for the advancement of three investigator led clinical trials and as a direct result of their labs’ close collaboration between scientists, surgeons and medical oncologists.
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