If the American Cancer Society's projections prove accurate, more people will die from pancreatic cancer than from breast, brain, ovarian, or prostate cancer this year. One reason pancreatic cancer is so lethal is its resistance to traditional chemotherapy. But surgical oncologist Brian Boone, MD, at the West Virginia University School of Medicine, is exploring whether FOLFIRINOX--a new combination of cancer drugs--can improve outcomes in patients whose pancreatic cancer is "borderline resectable," meaning that a tumor may be too close to a blood vessel to be removed safely. "The way pancreatic tumors sit, they're very close to several important blood vessels that you really can't live without. That's where chemotherapy comes into play," said Dr. Boone, an Assistant Professor in the School of Medicine's Department of Surgery. "We try to shrink the tumor off of the vein and change it from borderline resectable to resectable, or removable by surgery." In a recent meta-analysis of 24 studies, Dr. Boone and a team of researchers considered 313 cases of borderline resectable pancreatic cancer that physicians treated with FOLFIRINOX. They analyzed the patients' overall survival rates. They also evaluated how frequently tumors shrank enough to be surgically removed. The team found that FOLFIRINOX prolonged patients' lives, on average, and made surgery possible in more instances. Their findings were published online on May 14, 2019 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute (JNCI).Login Or Register To Read Full Story