Insight

Anirban Maitra: The challenge of Pancreatic Cancer

Anirban Maitra/X

Jan 18, 2025, 07:41

Anirban Maitra: The challenge of Pancreatic Cancer

Anirban Maitra, Director of the Sheikh Ahmed Pancreatic Cancer Research Center, shared a post on X:

“The challenge of Pancreatic Cancer encapsulated here in Cancer Statistics 2025. Improvements in survival for PDAC have mostly come from localized stage of disease (left: 5y survival rates), but localized disease is still only a minor fraction of cases (right: Stage at Dx).

‘In contrast, death rates for pancreatic cancer, the third leading cause of cancer death, have gradually increased since cancer mortality reporting began, from about five per 100,000 in both men and women in the 1930s to 13 per 100,000 men and 10 per 100,000 women today.

This trend reflects improved classification on death certificates as well as increased incidence since the mid-1990s, in part because of the obesity epidemic.

In contrast to most cancers, however, therapeutic advances are also lacking despite substantial effort that includes national legislation to focus attention on pancreatic cancer (House Resolution 733: Recalcitrant Cancer Research Act of 2012).

Since 2000, there have been 481 phase 1 clinical trials and 85 phase 3 trials conducted on metastatic pancreatic cancer, along with five new drug approvals; yet median survival for the disease remains less than 1 year.

The appearance of a three-fold increase in the 5-year relative survival rate, from 4% in the mid-1990s to 13% in 2014–2020, is partly an artifact of a burgeoning number of incidentally detected, well-differentiated neuroendocrine tumors.

For the nine in 10 patients diagnosed with pancreatic adenocarcinoma, 5-year survival remains just 8%.’ ”

“Cancer statistics, 2025”

Authors: Rebecca Siegel, Tyler Kratzer, Angela Giaquinto, Hyuna Sung, Ahmedin Jemal.

Anirban Maitra: The challenge of Pancreatic Cancer

More posts featuring Anirban Maitra.

Anirban Maitra serves as a Professor of Pathology and Translational Molecular Pathology at UT MD Anderson Cancer Center. He directs the Sheikh Ahmed Pancreatic Cancer Research Center and is a Distinguished University Chair at Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

He leads an NCI-funded laboratory dedicated to pancreatic cancer research, focusing on genetics and molecular pathology in human and mouse models. His research aims to advance early detection and interception strategies to enhance patient survival rates in pancreatic cancer.