This interesting article in the British national press has created a lot of hysteria in the media.
It concerns a drug in development called Plerixafor. It breaks down a thick wall of chemokine protein which forms a protective barrier around pancreatic cancer cells and prevents the body’s immune cells from breaking through to attack the tumour. Plerixafor is used with other drugs which boost the helpful T cells’ activity. Thus the drug enables the body's immune system to recognise the cancer as foreign, and mount an attack on it.
There are a few note of caution however.
1. The drug is at a very early stage of development and has not been tested in humans yet.
2. Pancreatic cancer models in mice behave very differently to human beings.
3. Excellent results in mice do not mean these results will be replicated in humans.
4. The drug has to be combined with other drugs to exert its effect.
5. Even if successful the drug is up to 10 years away from a license.
I believe that immunotherapy - the stimulation of the body's immune system to fight the cancer - will see a rapid increase in popularity over the coming years, not just in pancreas cancer. This is happening as we now better understand how the immune system works, and how cancers are able to evade it.