Only 9.3 percent of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer made it past the remission period between 2009 and 2015, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI). Researchers at New York University School of Medicine recently made some headway into the treatment of one of the top 10 most common cancers that is estimated to be diagnosed in 55,770 people in 2019. They studied the fungal microbiome, specifically the way certain species could cause pancreatic cancer, in a paper published in the journal Nature on October 2. Previously, bacteria and fungi were linked to colon and liver cancer. In a major breakthrough, researchers have observed a connection to pancreatic cancer for the first time, although the hypothesis is not new and was not well recieved before. The paper described how fungi travel from the gut in the opposite direction of digestive juices and reach the pancreatic duct. This is also the tube used by the pancreas to transport digestive juices to the intestine. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) is one of three types of pancreatic cancers, and make up about 90 percent of all pancreatic cancer cases. Regarding the cancer and the multiplication of the fungi, the study stated “PDA tumors in humans and mouse models of this cancer displayed an increase in fungi of about 3,000-fold compared to normal pancreatic tissue." “While past studies from our group have shown that bacteria travel from the gut to the pancreas, our new study is the first to confirm that fungi too make that trip, and that related fungal population changes promote tumor inception and growth,” senior study co-author George Miller said in the news release. Source
