Animal Research Points to Potential Pancreatic Cancer Cure

Whenever I write in support of animal research, some accuse me of cruelty and indifference to the suffering of animals. Nothing could be further from the truth.

I am eager for the number animals used in experiments to be reduced as much as possible — but only to an extent consistent with assuring scientific progress — because I care more about reducing human suffering. If we want a science sector that can produce medicines and techniques to treat disease and ameliorate pain (which also often benefits animals), like it or not, that requires the “grim good” of animal research.

Another example of this sector’s importance just hit the news. A Spanish scientist has discovered a way to significantly reduce pancreatic cancer in mice. From the Live Science Plus story:

A triple-drug therapy for pancreatic cancer has shown promise in early animal tests, pointing to a potential new treatment for a disease with a notoriously low survival rate…

Now, in a study published Dec. 2 in PNAS, researchers tested a new combination therapy that blocks three cancer-growth pathways simultaneously and shows promising results in mice…

The new therapy not only prevented the rodents’ cancer from coming back, but it was also non-toxic for mice overall, showing no debilitating side effects.

This kind of research would not work on a computer model or just with cell lines. A living organism is needed.

The team evaluated this three-drug therapy in three types of mouse models: one in which tumor cells from mice are implanted directly into the mouse pancreas; one involving mice that were genetically engineered to develop pancreatic cancer; and one using human tumor samples grown in immune-deficient mice, to prevent mouse immune system from attacking foreign tissue. In all three models, the combination treatment eliminated the tumors completely.

“You couldn’t even see where the tumor was,” Guerra told Live Science. “The pancreas was completely healthy.”

Does this success mean it will necessarily work in humans? No. But it points in the right direction:

“These studies open a path to designing a new combination therapies that can improve survival for patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma [the most common pancreatic cancer],” the study authors said in a statement. “These results point the way for developing new clinical trials.”

Given this new research was in mice, there could be some differences in human pancreatic cancer patients. Guerra noted that mice can be “more resistant to this kind of toxicity” than humans are. While the therapy didn’t show any side effects in mice, some drugs they used, like afatinib, have already been tested in humans and are known to have some side effects, such as skin and gastrointestinal issues.

So, the researchers are now working to find alternatives and “develop better drugs” that hit the same pathways, she told Live Science.

This is the reality of the situation. Some areas of early experimentation require either using animals or going straight from the drawing board to humans. And remember, in this field of research, subjects have to be given precise kinds of cancer and later, killed so that the results of the experiment can be studied to obtain the knowledge required to move to the next steps.

Or we can make a different moral choice and materially impede medical and scientific progress by limiting research to exclusively non-animal methods and experiments in sick humans. If we do that, more humans will die and treatments will take longer to develop. Some probably won’t be discovered at all.

That being the case — as a matter of humanitarian morality and ethics — I choose continuing to allow properly constructed studies on animals. What say you?