Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest cancers. Survival rates have not improved in decades. Now, researchers at the Ottawa Hospital are giving patients something they have had little of before – hope, in the form of a tiny virus. So far the research has only been on mice but the results have been impressive. These cancer killing viruses are helping scientists here unlock the key to pancreatic cancer cells. Two years ago, Sindy Hooper was training for Iron Man Canada when a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer stopped her in her tracks.
‘I was shocked,’ says the marathon runner and mother of two, ‘I was probably in the best shape of my life, living healthy and had none of the risk factors for pancreatic cancer.’
Hooper underwent immediate dramatic surgery, where they removed half her pancreas, half her stomach, part of her intestine and her gall bladder. That surgery was followed by months of chemotherapy and radiation. But, still, she knows the odds are not good.
‘Unfortunately, the reality is that it will come back at some point.’
Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest, killing approximately forty-four thousand Canadians every year. Only 6 percent of people diagnosed with it will survive more than 5 years. Those survival rates haven't changed in decades.
It is the cancer that killed Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, movie star Patrick Swayze and opera singer Luciano Pavorotti.
But that cancer may have met its match inside a lab at the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute
‘So, these are the pancreatic cells that you were infecting?’ asks Dr. John Bell, a senior scientist at the Research Institute and the author of a paper published today in Nature Medicine on this issue. He poses the question to Dr. Carolina Ilkow, who is the lead author for the paper’s experiments.
‘As you can see, the cells are dying,’ she tells Dr. Bell.
Dr. Bell and Dr. Ilkow have found a way to make pancreatic cancer cells respond to cancer-killing viruses. It's worked in mice; trials on humans are a few years away.
‘The virus is very good at infecting and replicating and destroying pancreatic cancer cells much better than the ones we had before,’ says Dr. Bell.
The virus also boosts the immune system and is far easier on the body than chemo or radiation. The results of their work were published today in the journal Nature Medicine.
‘I’m optimistic we will find something that will help people have a better outcome than they currently do with a lot fewer side effects,’ he adds.
That optimism has given Sindy Hooper the drive to run again. She is leading a team called “Marathoners Gone Viral” with more than 120 participants running the Ottawa marathon in Tamarack Ottawa Race Weekend in May to raise money for this research.
‘This is supposed to be a virus here,’ she says as she points to the team’s t-shirts, ‘and it says hope because these viruses that Dr. Bell is researching offer us a lot of hope for survival.’
The team has raised $50-thousand dollars so far but Sindy Hooper says they've still got five weeks to go before the race. She's confident they can even better than that.
