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Rosenzweig et al. J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2022;8:46 Journal of Cancer
DOI: 10.20517/2394-4722.2022.58
Metastasis and Treatment

Opinion Open Access

More efficient clinical trials in pancreatic cancer:
develop better treatment options, faster

Allison Rosenzweig, Cassadie Moravek, Lynn M. Matrisian

Scientific and Medical Affairs, Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, Manhattan Beach, CA 90266, USA.
Correspondence to: Dr. Lynn Matrisian, Scientific and Medical Affairs, Pancreatic Cancer Action Network 1500 Rosecrans Ave.
Suite 200, Manhattan Beach, CA 90266, USA. E-mail: lmatrisian@pancan.org

How to cite this article: Rosenzweig A, Moravek C, Matrisian LM. More efficient clinical trials in pancreatic cancer: develop
better treatment options, faster. J Cancer Metastasis Treat 2022;8:46. https://dx.doi.org/10.20517/2394-4722.2022.58

Received: 24 May 2022 First Decision: 20 Jul 2022 Revised: 22 Aug 2022 Accepted: 27 Sep 2022 Published: 19 Oct 2022

Academic Editors: Marco Falasca, Palanisamy Nallasamy Copy Editor: Fangling Lan Production Editor: Fangling Lan

Abstract
Clinical development of new treatment options for patients with pancreatic cancer has been slow and expensive
and resulted in few effective therapies. With a dismal five-year survival rate of 11% in the U.S., pancreatic cancer
remains the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths and is poised to move to second by 2030. Standard
clinical trials typically compare one investigational treatment to one standard of care, encompass one phase of
clinical investigation at a time, and treat one patient population. Accrual and data analysis are often very slow, and
unfortunately, the vast majority of clinical trials targeting pancreatic cancer patients are unsuccessful. More
efficient clinical trial designs can include combining phases I and II or phases II and III, and trials that involve a
master protocol approach can also answer multiple clinical questions simultaneously. These modern clinical trial
designs can allow a faster, more efficient and cost-effective approach to testing investigational therapies in
patients with pancreatic cancer and, most importantly, fewer patients may be required to determine the efficacy of
treatment. Herein we summarize some of the recent innovative clinical trials in pancreatic cancer to provide
meaningful data toward developing new treatment options to benefit patients with a dismal disease like pancreatic
cancer.

Keywords: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, clinical trials, master protocols, platform trials

© The Author(s) 2022. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, for any purpose, even commercially, as
long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and
indicate if changes were made.

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