When Angela Uttaro was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she was told she had 22 months to live. This summer marked eight years since she received that diagnosis.
“I was afraid I wasn't going to make it to my daughter's high school graduation,” Uttaro said. “I did, and I cried.”
After intense rounds of chemotherapy and a few surgeries, Uttaro is one of the 13% of people that the National Cancer Institute said manage to live past five years after being diagnosed with the disease.
“I'm diabetic now. That's a gift that you get with pancreatic cancer. But I'll take that if it means I'm still here,” she said.
Pancreatic cancer is the third-deadliest cancer in the U.S. — lung cancer and colorectal cancer are first and second — and researchers at Wilmot Cancer Institute have dedicated time to developing better treatment.
“The current therapy for pancreatic cancer, I hate to say it, but it's terrible,” said Dr. Darren Carpizo, a surgeon scientist at Wilmot. “It's a disease where, if you can make even just the small increase in survival, it's a really significant step forward.”
Carpizo and Dr. Scott Gerber received a $3 million reward from the National Cancer Institute to further develop and test a novel treatment for pancreatic cancer.
The doctors identified an experimental drug in France that they said is “very effective at removing pancreatic cancer cells that have spread to other parts of the body.”
“Our treatment activates our immune cells, cells that are in our own body, to recognize and destroy that cancer,” Gerber said. He added that the new treatment will combine the drug with current immunotherapy and radio therapy creating a one-two approach — or “sledgehammer approach” — to eradicate the disease.
Both investigators said it could take a couple of years before the data and findings are sufficient enough to test in humans.
