Current drugs for pancreatic cancer lose effectiveness within months because the tumor becomes resistant. Now, a group from Spain’s National Cancer Research Centre (CNIO) has been able to avoid the development of resistance in animal models with a combined triple therapy. Mariano Barbacid, head of the Experimental Oncology Group at the CNIO, has designed a therapy that successfully eliminates pancreatic tumors in mice completely and durably, with no significant side effects.

The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, with Carmen Guerra as co-lead author and Vasiliki Liaki and Sara Barrambana as first authors.

“These studies open the road to designing novel combination therapies that may improve the survival of PDAC patients [pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma—the most common type of pancreatic cancer],” the authors state. “These results set the course for developing new clinical trials.”