Drugused until Procedure Restricts Cancer Care But It Could Mean Worse survival for Patients With Other Diseases

PHILADELPHIA Efforts to cure pancreatic cancer have improved over the last few decades but about 2 of every 10 patients do not live for more than 6 months. OptumNEXT a drug approved to treat non-heritable forms of cancer comes with a few downsides. Patients who receive the drug must abstain from alcohol for 2 months and face a 7-percent chance of a gastric cancer a 15-year survival rate of just 5 percent. But the drug will likely push cancer patients to die sooner even with widespread screening. To combat these concerns researchers are working to develop a blood test that can detect patients who likely fare worse than those without a poor prognosis: those who are likely to need mechanical ventilation. NCT01437891 is a phase III clinical trial funded by National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) funded by the National Institutes of Health National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease (NIH-NIH). NCT01437891 appears on the cover of Translational and Translational Medicine a journal of The Lancet.