Northwestern Medicine's new antibody therapy helps immune system identify, kill pancreatic cancer cells
Northwestern scientists said they may have found a way to cure pancreatic cancer, which is notorious for being hard to treat.
The development is extremely hopeful as doctors said only 13% of patients live five years — most do not make it that long.
Northwestern's study found the new treatment works in mice. The next step is to see if it works in humans, and they are working as quickly as they can to get there.
"I will probably have chemotherapy probably for the rest of my life," Mychael Swan said.
Swan, a 71-year-old Northwestern basketball fan, was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer two and a half years ago.
He lives in Bloomington, Illinois, two hours southwest of Chicago, with his wife, who has been by his side for all his treatments.
"My oncologist told me, I don't believe in determining what kind of life expectancy you have," he said.
The good news is Myke's tumor shrank with treatment, and he can work a full-time job at Menards while commuting to Chicago every two to three weeks for chemotherapy at Northwestern. He has also been part of four clinical trials.
"I will do whatever they need me to do to help not only myself but everybody else that is a cancer patient at Lurie Cancer Center," he said.
One of the next ones he is interested in participating in was discovered by Dr. Mohamed Abdel-Mohsen and his team.
"Cancer does a lot of tricks, from fooling our immune system from attacking it," Dr. Abdel-Mohsen said.
His team took six years to develop a new antibody therapy. They found pancreatic cancer cells play a trick on a person's immune system to fool it. They wear a sugar cloak to disguise themselves as a healthy cell and latch on to them, but this new antibody therapy adds a blocker that reawakens the immune system and kills the cancer cells.
So far, it's worked in mice.
"Now the immune system will see the cancer cells for what it really is and will start attacking it," Dr. Abdel-Mohsen said.
He said it could still be another five years before this is offered to patients.
"Hopefully can reach the goal of like full remission," he said.
But there are still clinical trials that some patients like Myke could take part in even sooner.
"The difference between mice and humans is significant. However, the fact that they have this process going on and the technology that they use in their research is so amazing," Swan said.
Dr. Abdel-Mohsen said the therapy could also be used to destroy other cancers or diseases.
Right now, in mice, the cancer tumors are growing much more slowly, which is good, but their goal is to remove the cancer altogether.