Oklahoma research could make detecting pancreatic cancer easier

OKLAHOMA CITY (KFOR) – Groundbreaking cancer research is ongoing at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center.

Researchers said in the near future, doctors in clinics could be detecting cancer tumors like never before.

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It’s a study that’s the first of its kind with a targeted agent that finds even the most microscopic tumors within someone’s body and allows them to make sure they get all of them out and leave nothing behind.

“It could be game changing for patients,” researcher and professor in the University of Oklahoma Department of Surgery, Lacey McNally said.

Chief of Surgical Oncology and professor, Ajay Jain, M.D., joined McNally in the research at OU Health’s Stephenson Cancer Center.

“This technology allows us to see the cancer cells at a microscopic level,” Jain said.

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“So our project is on a way to be able to more directly and more accurately resect pancreas tumors, pancreatic cancer,” McNally said.

The American Cancer Society projects over 66,000 people will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2024. Of those, almost 52,000 are projected to die.

Jain said three quarters of the patients they see with it are at a stage where they can’t be operated on. And even when they can be operated on, it doesn’t cure the vast majority of them.

“The problem is that this disease can be very aggressive on a microscopic level and it can be hard to remove it all at the time of the initial operation,” Jain said.

Any misses force people to have to go back in for more surgery or extra chemo treatment.

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That’s where this study comes in.

It’s an agent that they made that goes into the body and targets waste products made by cancer cells and lights it all up.

“You can target a dye that can pick up something the size of a human hair and detect cancer at that level,” Jain said.

If surgeons like Jain can see it, they can get it. They’re hoping it can be the future of cancer surgery in the years to come.

“We came here to cure patients and so we’re doing that,” McNally said.

McNally said this can also work with other cancerous tumors as well. They hope to have this in patients at clinics in the next 5 years.

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