Cambridge Research Institute (CRI) scientists, with an international team of collaborators, have discovered a new mechanism that may explain why pancreatic cancer patients are often resistant to a common chemotherapy treatment called gemcitabine. The study was published online in the journal Science on 21 May.

The team used a mouse model of pancreatic cancer to find out that tumours often become resistant to gemcitabine because they have a poor network of blood vessels (vascualture) which makes it harder for drugs to reach the tumour.

Understanding why chemotherapy drugs don't work as well as expected will help scientists to develop new treatments in the future.

Gemcitabine (stained green) can't reach a pancreatic tumour (stained in blue).

The researchers also found that a new compound called IPI-926, created by Infinity Pharmaceuticals, increased cell death and reduced tumour size when used with gemcitabine in their mouse model. This means that the team's new genetically modified models could prove superior in developing treatments in the future.

For the full press release and other Cancer Research UK news, see online news.

For more details on the research behind this paper, see David Tuveson's research profile, John Griffiths' research profile, the Histopathology Core Facility and the Light Microscopy Core Facility.