Yielding Durable Responses Using Targeted Therapies in Pancreatic Cancer

According to Gregory L. Beatty, MD, PhD, director of Translational Research at the University of Pennsylvania Pancreatic Cancer Research Center and director of the Penn-Incyte Alliance, this is an exciting time for the treatment of pancreatic cancer because of the emergence of targeted therapies.

Beatty spoke with CancerNetwork® about a presentation he gave at the 15th Annual Ruesch Symposium on the promise of immunotherapy in the treatment of pancreatic cancer. He expressed that targeted therapies are at an exciting place for treatment and specifically pointed towards KRAS-targeted agents and PRMT5inhibitors, among the other approaches that have been found, as methods for controlling pancreatic cancer.

Additionally, he discussed the challenge of durability in different types of treatment as cancers develop a resistance to the therapies they’re exposed to. Beatty spoke about different ways that immunotherapy can be deployed to generate immune memory in patients with pancreatic cancer so that a larger window will be available for durable responses. He also discussed the rate-limiting steps that pertain to getting immunotherapy to work in patients with pancreatic cancer.

Transcript:

I’m going to talk about our current state of therapy for pancreatic cancer, and I’m going to make the point that targeted therapies are at a place, right now, where we’re quite excited. There are KRAS-targeted inhibitors; there’s PRMT5 inhibitors; [and] there are other approaches that are on board to try to control pancreatic cancer. But one of the things that we’ve noticed with targeted therapies in general, across multiple different cancers, is that they inevitably spark treatment resistance. Durability is the challenge, and so we’re going to need to think about how can we employ immunotherapy to create immune memory and an opportunity for durable responses? I’m [also] going to talk about [the question of] what are some of the rate-limiting steps around how we get immunotherapy to work in pancreatic cancer?

Reference

Beatty GL.The promise of immunotherapy in pancreatic cancer amidst a landscape of precision medicine. Presented at the 15th Annual Ruesch Center Symposium; November 21-23, 2024; Washington, DC.