Every year, 42,000 Americans are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Few live very long, and less than 5% are still alive five years after diagnosis.

A laparoscopic surgical technique enables extirpation of pancreatic tumours that are benign or of scant, highly localised malignant potential and that preserves the function of the organ to the maximum, at the same time significantly reducing the number of possible complications and the period of hospitalisation.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest and most difficult to treat cancers. Now, in a major step forward, researchers at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center have shown that administering radiation therapy prior to surgery nearly doubles survival in pancreatic cancer patients with operable tumors.

Researchers at the Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Cancer Center and the VCU Institute of Molecular Medicine have published findings that implicate a new chemoprevention gene therapy (CGT) for preventing and treating pancreatic cancer, one of the most lethal and treatment-resistant forms of cancer.

Treating pancreatic cancer with a combination of chemotherapy, biotherapy and radiotherapy prior to surgery is safe and may be beneficial for patients, according to a University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute (UPCI) study presented at the 44th annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) in Chicago.

Investigators have developed antibodies that recognize pancreatic cancer. The antibodies were developed through a technique of injecting normal pancreas cells into mice.

In patients who are at very high risk of inheriting pancreatic cancer, surveillance can be effective if performed by a team of experienced specialists. The findings are important because at least 10 percent of pancreatic cancer is inherited and it is a lethal disease that is often not detected until it is too late, since the pancreas is not easily sampled, looked at or felt.

When surgeons need to remove part of the pancreas, performing the operation with minimally invasive techniques offers patients a shorter hospital stay and fewer complications, researchers have concluded.

There is a good chance that Patrick Swayze may receive hopeful treatment from pancreatic cancer due to the surgery, reports BBC.

New understanding of a protein that spurs the growth of pancreatic cancer could lead to a new vaccine against the deadly disease, said researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston in a report appearing in the current edition of the journal Molecular Cancer Therapeutics.

A new optical technology, coupled with routine endoscopy, may enable doctors to detect the subtle tell-tale traces of early pancreatic cancer, according to researchers at Northwestern University in Illinois.

Using novel light-scattering techniques, researchers have found the first evidence that early stage pancreatic cancer causes subtle changes in part of the small intestine. The easily monitored marker may ultimately allow early detection for a disease notorious for having few obvious symptoms, the primary reason pancreatic cancer killed more than 33,000 Americans last year.