MABPRO, a.s.

The clinical impact of CA9 in the treatment of patients suffering from a very difficult to treat form of pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a very aggressive type of pancreatic cancer with an extremely poor prognosis. Surgery is currently the only treatment option, but only 20% patients are diagnosed with anatomically resectable disease. Due to hypoxic environment associated with the expression of CA9, PDAC is resistant to conventional therapies. Japanese scientists led by Dr. Taichi Terai conducted research on a sample of nearly 300 patients diagnosed with PDAC who were either treated with neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (NACRT) or underwent upfront surgery. In a study published in Pancreatology, they report that patients who received NACRT treatment expressed lower levels of CA9 and showed a significantly higher median survival rate (49.2 months vs. 21.5 months). The study also puts forward the idea that CA9-positive patients could be the most clinically optimal group for NACRT treatment and highlights the utility of CA9 in predicting the prognostic value of NACRT. This is an innovative approach in the treatment of PDAC, which, according to the authors of the study, is unprecedented. The study results support the goals of anti-CAIX therapy and MABPRO's focus on personalized medicine. (the full article can be found at the following link: https://lnkd.in/eZXvhcWh)