A Spanish research team has reported a scientific advance in pancreatic cancer research after successfully eliminating aggressive tumours in laboratory mice using a targeted three-drug therapy. The study, led by Spanish cancer researcher Dr Mariano Barbacid, has drawn attention. This is because pancreatic cancer remains one of the deadliest and hardest cancers to treat.
The findings were produced at Spain’s National Cancer Research Centre and have been published in the scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Moreover, researchers stress that the results are still preclinical. This means the therapy has not been tested in humans and is not a cure.
However, experts say the study represents one of the strongest signals so far that pancreatic cancer may be vulnerable to carefully designed combination treatments.
Pancreatic cancer is widely known for its extremely poor survival rate. Fewer than one in ten patients survive five years after diagnosis. Doctors explain that this is mainly because the disease is usually discovered late, spreads quickly to other organs, and strongly resists most existing treatments. Standard chemotherapy often works only briefly. This is because tumours quickly adapt and continue growing.
Because of this, scientists consider any long-term removal of pancreatic tumours in experimental models to be highly meaningful.
At the centre of most pancreatic cancers is a faulty gene called KRAS. This gene constantly sends signals that tell cancer cells to grow and divide. KRAS mutations are found in more than 90 percent of pancreatic cancer cases. For decades, researchers struggled to block this gene effectively, leading many treatments to fail.
Recent KRAS-targeting drugs have shown some promise, but the cancer often finds alternative ways to survive. When one growth pathway is blocked, tumours activate other routes, allowing the disease to return. This ability to adapt is one of the main reasons pancreatic cancer has remained so difficult to treat.
Dr Barbacid and his team decided to take a different approach. Instead of blocking a single pathway, they attacked the cancer from multiple directions at the same time. The therapy combined three drugs that target main survival systems used by tumour cells.
One drug blocked the main KRAS growth signal. Another shuts down EGFR and HER2 pathways, which cancers often use as escape routes when KRAS is blocked. The third drug disabled STAT3, a stress-response system that helps cancer cells survive treatment. The researchers described the strategy as “cuts the engine, seals the exits, and disables the emergency backup at the same time.”
When it was tested on genetically engineered mice designed to closely mimic human pancreatic cancer, tumours completely disappeared. Even more importantly, the cancer did not return for more than 200 days after treatment stopped. Similar results were seen in tumours taken from human patients and grown in laboratory conditions.
In traditional chemotherapy, which often causes severe side effects, the three-drug combination was well tolerated by the animals. Researchers said this is a crucial factor if the therapy is ever to move toward human testing. The study does not mean pancreatic cancer has been cured in people. Many treatments that work in animals fail during human trials due to safety issues or reduced effectiveness.
The next steps will involve further animal studies, detailed safety checks, regulatory reviews, and, if approvals and funding allow, early-phase human clinical trials. Researchers say this process will take several years.
Dr Barbacid, who has spent decades studying KRAS-driven cancers, has long argued that pancreatic cancer cannot be defeated with a single-drug approach because of its extraordinary ability to adapt. The latest study strongly supports this view and provides a clear direction for future research.
