Increase investment in Pancreatic Cancer research

Research into this cancer has been underfunded for decades. It only receives 2% of the UK cancer research budget. This is 3 times less than research spent on breast cancer. By investing in researchers, earlier diagnosis & better treatments & care can be found to treat one of the deadliest cancers.

More than half of patients die within 3 months of diagnosis, for my Grandfather it was just 9 days. Diagnosis of this cancer can take a long time, often with many visits to the doctors & possible misdiagnoses along the way. Around 80% of pancreatic cancer patients are not diagnosed until the cancer is at an advanced stage. At this late stage, surgery is usually not possible – this is the only known treatment that has the potential to cure the disease.

Research is crucial in the fight against cancer. That is why the Department of Health and Social Care invests £1bn per year in health research through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR). NIHR cancer research expenditure has risen from £101 million in 2010/11 to £138 million in 2019/20. This constitutes the largest investment in a disease area.

The Department welcomes more high-quality research applications on pancreatic cancer, and especially on early diagnosis. The Department is relying on researchers to develop proposals in this difficult area. In this respect, the Department particularly welcomes Pancreatic Cancer UK’s Early Diagnosis Research Alliance initiative, which aims to bring researchers together to share their thinking. The Department hopes this will generate ground-breaking research ideas and stands ready to fund such ideas through the NIHR.

The NIHR is funding a range of pancreatic cancer research. Some examples include:

• Treatment of unresectable Locally Advanced Pancreas (LAP) cancer with Percutaneous Irreversible Electroporation (PIE) following initial systemic chemotherapy (£246K)Translational proteomics to understand and overcome drug resistance to targeted anticancer drugs in KRAS and PIK3CA driven cancers (£1.9m)

• A phase II trial of endoscopic ultrasound-guided radiofrequency ablation of cystic tumours of the pancreas (RADIOCYST) (£291k)

The NIHR is also supporting the delivery in the health and care system of pancreatic cancer research funded by research funding partners in the charity and public sectors. For example, over the last five years the NIHR Clinical Research Network has supported over 100 pancreatic cancer studies at an estimated cost of over £3 million per year.