A cancer diagnosis is never good news, but one for pancreatic cancer is among the most challenging. With five-year survival rates for patients as low as 5-12%, it is the deadliest of the common cancers in the UK and globally. To make matters worse, 8 in 10 patients cannot be offered potentially life-saving surgery because the cancer is too advanced when first detected.
The problem is compounded because, unlike breast cancer for example, it’s hard for people to detect their own pancreatic cancer, and there’s no regular screening because currently there is no established test for early signs of the condition.
Improving early detection times is therefore the primary goal to improve patient outcomes. UK-EDI is headed up by Professor Eithne Costello, a molecular oncologist based at the University of Liverpool’s Department of Molecular and Clinical Cancer Medicine. With colleagues, she is working on the development of novel approaches to detect pancreatic cancer early in people newly diagnosed with diabetes.
The connection with diabetes is that at the time of cancer diagnosis, well over half of all pancreatic cancer patients have elevated blood sugars with 3 in 10 having recently become diabetic. The diabetes precedes the cancer by a year or so, and this window is when a timely intervention could save lives.
With funding from the Cancer Research UK, the UK-EDI programme is recruiting 2,000 people aged 50 years or older who have been diagnosed with diabetes within the last six months. Blood samples and clinical data are collected from participants at appointments every six months for two years. Comparisons between those that are- and those are not subsequently diagnosed with pancreatic cancer highlight differences that could be turned into biomarkers for early detection of this deadly disease.
What is my risk of pancreatic cancer after a new diagnosis of diabetes?
Most people who are newly diagnosed with type 2 diabetes will not develop pancreatic cancer. However, for people 50 year of age and over, about 1 in 100 with new diabetes will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer within three years. For this small group, diabetes is an early sign of pancreatic cancer. The samples and health information collected from UK-EDI participants will help us find important clues about what happens in the body before pancreatic cancer is diagnosed, allowing us to detect it earlier in the future.
The promise of the diabetes connection means other research groups are also on the same track. UK-EDI collaborates with international colleagues; the Consortium of Chronic Pancreatitis, Diabetes and Pancreatic Cancer in the US and the European research networks Pancreatic Cancer Europe and TRANSPAN. Together, we aim to improve the outlook for this challenging condition.
UK-EDI works with Pancreatic Cancer UK Research Involvement network to ensure that our research meets the needs of a patients.
For more information about pancreatic cancer please follow this link.
See the below video for a presentation on UK-EDI.