Posted on 08/15/2026 8:05:46 AM PDT by libh8er
Inspired by the work of the RNA Therapeutics Institute at UMass Chan Medical School and the development of the COVID vaccine, Marcus Ruscetti, PhD, and Chaitanya Naimesh Parikh, PhD’26, have developed an immunotherapy using a cocktail of messenger RNAs (mRNA) that could potentially be transformative for pancreatic cancer treatment.
The study, published in Nature Communications, combines immune cytokine and tumor-associated antigen mRNAs into a single injection to treat pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Approximately 50 percent of mice with pancreatic cancer treated with the mRNA immunotherapeutic cocktail saw complete tumor responses and more impressively, remained disease free for a year, even after treatment had been stopped.
“It’s unheard of to get a response like this in these models of pancreatic cancer,” said Dr. Parikh, a recent PhD graduate from the Ruscetti Lab. “There have been a lot of drugs tried in the lab that have had good initial responses in mice but ultimately the cancer always comes back. This is the only study I’ve seen that has achieved durable tumor protection.”
Dr. Ruscetti, associate professor of molecular, cell & cancer biology, added, “Going from mice into patients takes a huge effort and is never a sure thing. However, if there was one approach I had to bet on being successful, this is the one. And that’s what we’re doing.”
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is the most common and aggressive type of pancreatic cancer. It starts inside the tiny tubes that carry digestive juices out of the pancreas. Because early signs are hard to notice, pancreatic cancer is often found after it has spread to other organs. The five-year survival rate for stage IV of the disease is 3 percent, while the overall survival rate for all stages is 13 percent.
Immunotherapies have emerged as an incredibly effective treatment strategy for certain cancer types. These drugs use the power of the body’s own immune system to find, control and destroy cancer cells. In the 1980s and 1990s, cytokines–tiny proteins, such as interleukins, interferons and tumor necrosis factors released by cells that act as chemical messengers to recruit, activate and produce immune cells–were used to stimulate the immune system into fighting cancer cells. Unfortunately, these early attempts turned on the body’s entire immune system, causing a system-wide reaction that had dangerous side effects and did not eradicate most tumors.
Thanks to decades of basic biological research, scientists now know the specific cytokines that activate the immune system to fight different kinds of foreign and damaged cells, including pancreatic cancer. “What we need is a way to get these immune signals to the tumor so they can do their job,” said Ruscetti.
Pancreatic tumors, however, are very good at hiding from immune cells. The cancer cells build a fibrotic barrier around the tumor, like a wall around a castle, that keeps immune cells at bay. To fight off the cancer cells, the immune system must break down this wall and get its cells into the tumor environment in a way that doesn’t exhaust its ability to mount a defense while also recognizing tumor cells as foreign material that need removing.
“All these steps are lacking in pancreatic cancer,” said Ruscetti. “That’s where the mRNA comes into play.”
mRNAs carry the genetic instructions necessary for building proteins–such as cytokines and antigens. They act as a temporary copy of a gene that is then translated into a protein. When injecting mouse models with five cytokine mRNAs, combined with three tumor antigen mRNAs that help the immune system “see” the pancreatic tumor cells as foreign materials, Ruscetti and Parikh observed a reduction in fibrotic material and increased tumor cell necrosis.
Approximately half of the mice treated experienced complete remission that continued up to one year after treatment had been stopped, potentially indicating that the immune system had established a long-term “memory” of the pancreatic cancer cells.
“This is a first-of-its-kind approach combining cytokine mRNAs with tumor associated antigen mRNA that could pave the path for effective immunotherapy for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas,” said Parikh. “Beyond this cancer, this mRNA immunotherapy strategy has the capacity to be modular and can potentially be used as a platform to treat other types of immune-resistance cancers simply by swapping out different mRNA sequences.”
Initial funding for the study was provided by the Worcester-based Pancreatic Cancer Alliance, a patient advocacy group that supports pancreatic cancer research at UMass Chan. Researchers are now developing a potential IND-ready product of the cocktail in preparation for future clinical trials.
Dear FRiends,
We need your continuing support to keep FR funded. Your donations are our sole source of funding. No sugar daddies, no advertisers, no paid memberships, no commercial sales, no gimmicks, no tax subsidies. No spam, no pop-ups, no ad trackers.
If you enjoy using FR and agree it's a worthwhile endeavor, please consider making a contribution today:
Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you,
Jim
Trust me, if you have Pancreatic Cancer, the mRNA thing is the least of your worries.
Side effects? You get to live.
Did you see the part where the 5 year survival rate is 13%?
Well the current side effects from PC (if you survive):
1. They open you up and re-arrange what is left of your digestive system. If you are lucky, you need pancreatic enzymes to digest your food. (Right now those are not covered by insurance and cost about $500 a month.)
2. The chemotherapy that is used will leave your head in a fog and can permanently destroy the nerve endings in your fingers and toes.
3. Consistent solid bowel movements are kind of a memory.
4. Chemotherapy can cause parts of your bowels to become necrotic.
5. IF you survive longer than five years, you will periodically get what are referred to as “Whipple Attacks” where your digestive system will just “dump” for a few days.
6. You have some wonderful scars. My wife’s navel is about five inches off center because of the surgeries.
I would think the side effects from a mRNA shot are probably minimal in comparison.
Harpotoo wrote: “Thank you for your BS reply to a serious question.”
Asking about side effects for the only known effective treatment for pancreatic cancer isn’t a serious question. The only serious question is will this product help me live longer with less pain.
MayflowerMadam wrote: “Dugway is a whore for Big Pharma. We learned that five years ago.”
And, you’re one of the leading whores for the anti-vaxxer conspiracy cult.
1FreeAmerican wrote: “I’m not doing any vaccines at this point in my life even though my GP always pushes them at me. But if I was diagnosed with PC I’d prolly go with whatever treatment they had. Too often folks are in Stage III or IV when it is discovered - 3% survival rate.”
Most of those who rail against mRNA therapies would take those therapies if they had cancers like PC. There are very few things that might cause one to reconsider their positions than an imminent painful death from PC.
I’ve lost my trust in research, especially mRNA research, due to Fauci’s crimes. It will take years of genuine proof for me to trust them again.
Not to mention all the published research that has been proven to be falsified.
We’ve known how to cure cancer in mice for decades. That doesn’t translate to people.
mRNA is a very promising technology in two areas: Inborn genetic defects and certain types of cancer.
In both of those cases, there is an inability to either REPLACE a defective protein the body is supplying because of a mutation occurring before birth, or PRODUCE a protein that has somehow become deleted during a lifespan that regulates cell growth and prevents cancer (of certain types).
The expansion of mRNA work to vaccines in the way it was done was, in my opinion, a mistake.
The situation of an infant facing death from phenylketonuira or a middle aged man whose acinar pancreatic cells have acquired a mutation that deleted the ability to regulate cell growth are not at all similar to preventative medicine in healthy people who would otherwise be expected to live a normal lifespan.
Only in "knockout" mice - mice bred with cancer causing defects which are known in advance.
So? We’ve cured it. Doesn’t matter where it came from if you can cure it.
“Anytime I see the acronym “mRNA” it’s always a big red flag to me.....and from now on probably always will be.”
No kidding. I thought the same thing. It’s difficult to get inspired about it.
I’m on my way to pancreatic cancer after 39 years of chronic pancreatitis.. inherited. Thanks Ma!
Come a little closer, said the spider to the fly.
To your list of unpleasant consequences, I can add the loss of about an hour after each meal sitting on the pot. That's a couple hours lost per day. Sometimes a middle of the night run too.
My pancreas was spared, but follow-up CT shows it beginning to atrophy. Not diabetic yet. No supplemental enzymes either, but I can eat 3,000 calories and just bump my weight up by 0.3 lb. I simply fail to absorb much of what goes down my throat. I have a 10mm x 15mm stent in the middle of my stomach too. My stomach closed fully above the pyloric valve causing vomiting that drove my weight down from 152 to 131. The stent fixed the closure. Food is passing. Just poorly absorbed. So much better than living on a feeding tube for the rest of my life. I do miss being able to efficient live on 1250 calories per day.
Some of my friends with PC are eligible for the latest meds to beat the KRAS sensitive tumor types. Perhaps an extra year on the green side of the lawn. My tumor type is 0.5% of cases. It will never be important enough to fashion a specialized treatment. Last I checked, there was 182 documented cases like mine. 5 year survival is about 32%. That beats 13%. Hoping things improve for your wife.
Wow, that all sounds horrible. How is your wife doing? Did she go through all of that?
When you experiment on the whole planet you do sometimes get a gold nugget or two...
Myocarditis be dammed....
That’s the short version. She is seven years out of it now. They got it all. But her’s was found very early; it had spread to within a centimeter of an artery. We were a week or so from it being very, very bad.
About halfway through the chemo, she had about 10 inches of her bowel go necrotic. So that took another surgery and she had a bag for six months. They were able to reverse the osteomy, but when they went to close her they found that she had so many surgeries in such a short time they had to stitch in a mesh to put her back together. That was fun.
I can tell you I became a fan of “big medicine” and “Big Pharma” during those two years. Not a fan of the Covid stuff—that was real minor league stuff compared to what we were going through at the same time.
Wow, what a horror tale. So glad it worked out for you two.
“I became a fan of “big medicine” and “Big Pharma” during those two years.”
I’ve been happy with all medical care. 45 years ago I had Hep A and was in an isolation ward in the hospital for two weeks. My dad had a quadruple bypass open heart surgery. Mom had cancer on her colon and they sectioned it. My wife’s first delivery was very complicated and required an emergency C-Section. I had a pulmonary embolism two years ago and got admitted to the hospital immediately and they tackled it aggressively. I was feeling dizzy the first part of the year and I had every scan you can imagine. Stopping one blood pressure med cured most of that. A couple of melanomas on relatives’ arms this year. And lots more. No complaints from me at all. So far, nothing at all like what your dear wife has had to endure.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.