Dr. Tempero on Emerging Agents in Pancreatic Cancer

Margaret A. Tempero, MD, director, University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Pancreas Center, professor of medicine, Division of Hematology and Oncology, UCSF Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center, discusses the interest in the pegylated hyaluronidase agent, PEGPH20, and clinical trials exploring other emerging agents in pancreatic cancer.

PEGPH20 has been tested in early clinical trials and appears to show benefit in patients who have hyaluronan (HA)-high levels. The degradation of HA decreases the interstitial pressure in the tumor. This results in a better distribution of chemotherapy through the solid tumor mass, arguably leading to better therapy, says Tempero. There's a large trial in progress using PEGPH20 in combination with gemcitabine and nab-paclitaxel (Abraxane) in patients with HA-high pancreatic cancer.

There's also a trial based entirely on preclinical studies with ibrutinib (Imbruvica). It is a randomized placebo control, phase II/III trial that completed accrual. The idea was to reprogram the immune environment so it would be more cancer fighting instead of cancer enabling.