Cancer stem cells are one of the main reasons why cancers are able to survive surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. They are able to hide from those therapies and, at a future date, emerge and spread the cancer in the body once again.

Jionglia Cheng, PhD., the lead author of a new CIRM-funded study, says that’s one of the reasons why pancreatic cancer has proved so difficult to treat.

“Pancreatic cancer remains a major health problem in the United States and soon will be the second most common cause of mortality due to cancer. A majority of pancreatic cancer patients are often resistant to clinical therapies. Thus, it remains a challenge to develop an efficacious clinically useful pancreatic cancer therapy.”

Dr. Cheng, a researcher with ChemRegen Inc., teamed up with John Cashman at the Human BioMolecular Research Institute and identified a compound, that seems to be effective in blocking the cancer stem cells.

In earlier studies the compound, called PAWI-2, demonstrated effectiveness in blocking breast, prostate and colon cancer. When tested in the laboratory PAWI-2 showed it was able to kill pancreatic cancer stem cells, and also was effective in targeting drug-resistant pancreatic cancer stem cells.

In addition, when PAWI-2 was used with a drug called erlotinib (brand name Tarceva) which is commonly prescribed for pancreatic cancer, the combination proved more effective against the cancer stem cells than erlotinib alone.

In a news release Dr. Cheng said: “In the future, this molecule could be used alone or with other chemotherapy albeit at lower doses, as a new therapeutic drug to combat pancreatic cancer. This may lead to much less toxicity to the patient,”

The study is published in the journal Scientific Reports.