Patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer may have a more promising treatment option in the future. Results from the Soft Tissue Ablation Registry (STAR), demonstrating that irreversible electroporation (IRE) with the NanoKnife® System, in combination with chemotherapy, doubled the overall survival rate of locally advanced (Stage III) pancreatic cancer patients to nearly 24 months was recently presented at the American Surgical Association annual meeting in San Diego. Locally advanced pancreatic cancer is Stage III cancer that has not yet spread.

Pancreatic cancer has one of the highest mortality rates of all cancers and is expected to climb from the fourth leading cause of cancer-related death in the U.S. to the second by 2020. Ninety four percent of pancreatic cancer patients will die within five years of diagnosis, and 74% of patients die within the first year of diagnosis.

The STAR data adds to the growing body of evidence that IRE ablation may represent a new treatment paradigm for patients with locally advanced pancreatic cancer, said Robert Martin, M.D., Ph.D. , director of the Division of Surgical Oncology, and Professor, Department of Surgery, University of Louisville. This new analysis of IRE could help change the standard of care for Stage III pancreatic cancer patients whose only treatment options until now were chemotherapy or a combination of chemo-radiation therapy, which will only stabilize the disease and not destroy the tumor. With IRE, these patients now have a surgical treatment option to augment their treatment plan.

The NanoKnife® IRE system is a tool that destroys cancerous cells by subjecting them to a series of short electrical pulses using high-voltage direct current that does not injure surrounding cells, blood vessels and other vital structures. IRE overcomes rapid growth of the tumor by killing all malignant cells at once so they cannot continue to grow and spread. The NanoKnife® IRE system is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for the surgical ablation of soft tissue. It is not approved for use in specific cancers.

Several media outlets recently did stories about the STAR study findings. To view some of those stories, please visit, http://beta.criticalmention.com/app/#report/view?982667/token/3b90d9f0-e66c-43ce-a10f-c97db05615b2