Pancreatic cancer has the highest mortality rate of all major cancers, and its incidence is climbing. Because it is typically asymptomatic at early stages, pancreatic cancer is especially difficult to catch and treat in time. This allows the cancer to spread or metastasize throughout the body, the ultimate cause of death for nearly all patients. Dannielle Engle, PhD, Salk colleagues, and collaborators at UC San Diego identified a unique sugar called HSAT (antithrombin-binding heparan sulfate) as a potential therapeutic target for slowing tumor progression and metastasis in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, the most common pancreatic cancer. The researchers say boosting HSAT may therefore slow the formation and spread of pancreatic cancer. Indeed, patients with higher pancreatic HSAT levels were found to have better survival rates. The study also found that HSAT was detectable in cancer patients’ plasma, making it potentially useful as a biomarker to help catch and track pancreatic cancer.
“We need to improve our understanding of the basic biology of pancreatic cancer if we want to one day prevent or cure it, and that’s what we’ve done here.” -Dannielle Engle
