{"id":222430,"date":"2025-09-25T00:04:35","date_gmt":"2025-09-25T05:04:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/key-driver-of-pancreatic-cancer-spread-identified"},"modified":"2025-09-25T00:04:35","modified_gmt":"2025-09-25T05:04:35","slug":"key-driver-of-pancreatic-cancer-spread-identified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/09\/key-driver-of-pancreatic-cancer-spread-identified","title":{"rendered":"Key driver of pancreatic cancer spread identified"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/key-driver-of-pancreatic-cancer-spread-identified.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>A Cornell-led study has revealed how a deadly form of pancreatic cancer enters the bloodstream, solving a long-standing mystery of how the disease spreads and identifying a promising target for therapy.<\/p>\n<p>Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is among the most lethal cancers, with fewer than 10% of patients surviving five years after diagnosis. Its microenvironment is a dense, fibrotic tissue that acts like armor around the tumor. This barrier makes <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/drug+delivery\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">drug delivery<\/a> difficult and should, in theory, prevent the tumor from spreading. Yet the cancer metastasizes with striking efficiency\u2014a paradox that has puzzled scientists.<\/p>\n<p>New research <a href=\"https:\/\/molecular-cancer.biomedcentral.com\/articles\/10.1186\/s12943-025-02384-w\" target=\"_blank\">published<\/a> in the journal <i>Molecular Cancer<\/i> reveals that a biological receptor called ALK7 is responsible, by activating two interconnected pathways that work in tandem. One makes cancer cells more mobile through a process called <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/epithelial-mesenchymal+transition\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">epithelial-mesenchymal transition<\/a>, and the other produces enzymes that physically break down the <a href=\"https:\/\/medicalxpress.com\/tags\/blood+vessel+walls\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">blood vessel walls<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A Cornell-led study has revealed how a deadly form of pancreatic cancer enters the bloodstream, solving a long-standing mystery of how the disease spreads and identifying a promising target for therapy. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is among the most lethal cancers, with fewer than 10% of patients surviving five years after diagnosis. Its microenvironment is a [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-222430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=222430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/222430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=222430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=222430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=222430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}