An oncologist at Nebraska Medicine is working alongside a team of researchers to test a new form of chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer patients.
Kelsey Klute is working on an intra-arterial chemotherapy, which means a catheter will be threaded through an artery in a patient’s neck or groin to deliver chemotherapy treatment to the tumor.
“Typically, we just give chemotherapy through a vein in the arm or accessing the blood vessel in the neck through a port,” Klute said. “The idea is that the chemo gets everywhere, and the hope is that it’s able to kill the cancer cells.”
Pancreatic cancer is more difficult to treat, Klute said. The tissue that forms around a pancreatic tumor means chemotherapy could be less effective.
“The idea here is that using this kind of higher-pressure system may be able to get better chemotherapy delivered to the tumor itself,” Klute said.
Qualifying patients are those with an advanced form of the disease, which Klute said is around 30% of people with pancreatic cancer.
The treatment is being delivered with chemotherapy and radiation therapy, which means it will be difficult to know just how effective the arterial treatment is, Klute said.
“Say we have a patient on this trial, they start with a tumor of a certain size, and by the time they’ve had chemo, radiation and intraarterial therapy, their tumor has shrunk," she said. "I don’t know for that given patient what fully led to the shrinkage of tumors."
The study is split with half of qualifying patients receiving the trial treatment.
Researchers are focusing on tumor shrinkage, improving survival rates and quality of life for patients with pancreatic cancer.