Pancreatic Cancer Turns Off a Key Gene in Order to Grow

THIS STORY ORIGINALLY appeared on WIRED Italia and has been translated from Italian.

Pancreatic cancer turns off one of our most important genes in order to be able to grow and spread, new research published in the journal Gastro Hep Advances has found.

The cancer is one of the most aggressive human diseases. It is the 12th most common cancer in the world, with more than half a million new diagnoses each year, yet it is often detected only at an advanced stage, when treatment options are limited. As a result, it has one of the worst survival rates, with more than half of patients dying within three months of diagnosis.

“Pancreatic cancer has the lowest survival among the 20 most common cancers. Patient survival at five years after diagnosis has improved very little,” Maria Hatziapostolou, a researcher at the John van Geest Cancer Research Center at Nottingham Trent University and coauthor of the study, told The Guardian. “It is extremely important to find new ways to better understand this disease, how it spreads, and why it is so aggressive.”

In the study, the researchers looked at tumor and healthy tissue samples. In their analysis, they found that pancreatic cancer triggers a process known as DNA methylation, where molecules attach to the DNA and alter how the body reads it. In this case, the DNA methylation deactivates HNF4A, a gene that helps promote the proper function of many organs. With the gene switched off, cancer cells are then able to spread very rapidly. “Loss of HNF4A drives the development and aggressiveness of pancreatic cancer, and we now know that it is related to poor patient survival,” Hatziapostolou explained in a press release on Monday.

“We desperately need less invasive and more effective treatment options for pancreatic cancer,” said Chris Macdonald, director of Pancreatic Cancer UK, in the same press release. Eighty percent of pancreatic cancer cases are detected only after the disease has spread and is no longer operable, he adds. “This study gives us new information about how pancreatic cancer is able to suppress certain molecules to spread aggressively in the body, which, in turn, could lead to the development of more effective treatment options,” he added.