John Rasko talks about improving pancreatic cancer survival
In Australia, only around 10% of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer survive for five years or more – and this rate has barely improved in the past few decades.
Professor Rasko is trying to change this by researching a new treatment called CAR T-cell immunotherapy. This type of treatment involves taking a patients own immune cells, reprogramming them so they attack only cancer cells, and then returning them to the patient to seek out and destroy the cancer.
CAR T-cell immunotherapy is so exciting because its already proving incredibly successful at treating some blood cancers. Around 80% of patients with advanced acute lymphoblastic leukaemia respond to treatment and remain disease-free after a single injection of CAR t-cells. If Professor Rasko is able to translate these results to a solid cancer like pancreatic cancer, it would bring hope to thousands of people every year.
