The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network is grateful to Alex Trebek for his continued openness about his treatment journey with pancreatic cancer. He has raised tremendous awareness about the disease and the need for better outcomes.
Trebek announced in various news interviews that he is still undergoing treatment for Stage IV pancreatic cancer, and we hope that he continues to do well.
Every pancreatic cancer patient’s case is unique, and it’s not possible to predict each person’s outcome. But, population-wide studies are done to estimate the likelihood that a person diagnosed with different types of cancer, like pancreatic cancer, will survive five years.
This year, the five-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer hit 10% – the first time ever this statistic has been reported in the double digits. While this is good news, pancreatic cancer still has the lowest survival rate of all major cancers and remains the third leading cause of cancer-related death in the U.S.
Trebek mentioned that he is being treated with experimental immunotherapy.
From what we know about the experimental treatment that he is getting, it is a combination of chemotherapy, radiation and an experimental immunotherapy approach.
Immunotherapy works by harnessing the patient’s own immune system to recognize, attack and kill their cancer cells. Typically, immunotherapy approaches require activating the immune system and suppressing efforts by the cancer cells to hide from the immune system.
To date, immunotherapy has not shown success by itself for most pancreatic cancer patients. A small subset of pancreatic cancer patients responds to a checkpoint inhibitor approach, depending on their tumor’s biology.
Therefore, many immunotherapy drugs are being tested in combination with other treatment options, like chemotherapy, to improve their effectiveness in patients with pancreatic cancer.
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