Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month - November 2005

The UK has been running the Gem-Cap trial of chemotherapy for advanced pancreatic cancer comparing the effect of gemcitabine combined with capecitabine with that of gemcitabine alone.

This trial was completed at the end of 2004 and the results were announced at ECCO 13 - the European Cancer Conference in Paris on 2nd November 2005 in the Presidential Symposium "Best of Oncology 2005" session.

This trial was a UK-wide multi-centre trial run under Professor David Cunningham on behalf of the NCRI Upper GI Clinical Studies Group and funded by Cancer Research UK

UK press release
USA press report

The Pancreatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland holds its annual meeting each year in November. This meeting for professionals discusses progress in treatment and research for pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer within the UK with invited speakers from abroad.

The All Party Parliamentary Group on Cancer held its annual "Britain Against Cancer" meeting on November 24th 2005 at Westminster.

This year the theme was "What next for cancer:Priorities for the next parliament and beyond"

We have lobbied for priority to be given to high mortality cancers such as pancreatic cancer.

Sue Ballard was invited to speak in the session on "Clinical trials, rarer cancers and genetics: the future" and the title of her talk was "Pancreatic Cancer - an end to nihilism".

This session examined the problems faced by cancer researchers focusing in particular on research into rarer cancers, genetics and the clinical trials.

In the report back to the full session we managed to get this changed to "rarer and high mortality" cancers. There was a lot of lively discussion in the session and Sue was supported by pancreatic cancer patient Trace Allen who spoke at the end of her presentation of his experience and the need for more research on diagnosis. We will provide more feedback later.

More information on the All Party Parliamentary Group on Cancer can be found on the CancerBACUP web-site.

Please write to your MP to support our call for higher priority and more spending on research and clinical services and infrastructure for pancreatic cancer.

We can provide a sample letter which you can modify to include your own experience.

Please can you also send us a copy by email or post to:

Pancreatic Cancer UK
31 Brooklyn Drive
Emmer Green
Reading
Berkshire
RG4 8SR

Thank you to all those who have written to their MPs. They have received positive feedback which will require follow-up in the coming months. We have certainly raised the profile of the need for more investment and further progress in pancreatic cancer.