Who is Dr. Mariano Barbacid? Spanish oncologist and his team achieve pancreatic cancer regression after targeted combination therapy

According to CNIO, among the various kinds of cancer, pancreatic cancer remains one of the deadliest and is a widely known tumor at a molecular level, with an immensely low survival rate. While less than five percent of patients with Pancreatic cancer tend to survive for only five years after diagnosis, there has been a significant breakthrough as Dr. Mariano Barbacid, along with his team of other doctors and scientists, achieved pancreatic cancer regression after targeted combination therapy, as per PNAS.

The 76-year-old Dr. Mariano Barbacid, who is from the capital city of Madrid, in Spain, is an oncologist and molecular biochemist. While he attended the Complutense University of Madrid, where he pursued chemical sciences, he then moved to the US, beginning work as an intern, and eventually became the director of the National Cancer Institute. Later, Dr. Mariano Barbacid returned to Spain to run the newly formed Spanish National Cancer Research Center (CNIO) as the director. He led the CNIO from 1998 to 2011.

Dr. Mariano Barbacid and his team achieved pancreatic cancer regression

The Spanish oncologist, Dr. Mariano Barbacid, along with his team of highly qualified researchers and scientists, managed to achieve pancreatic cancer regression following targeted combination therapy, which also prevents tumor resistance. While the groundbreaking therapy was tested in animal models, in this case mice, the triple combination that included daraxonrasib with afatinib, an irreversible EGFR/HER2 kinase inhibitor, and SD36, a selective STAT3 PROTAC that initiates the regression of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDACs) and prevents the beginning of tumor resistance.

However, as per Gamereactor, by using a combination of three drugs, among which one of them focused on the KRAS oncogenes, the other two drugs targeted EGFR and STAT3 proteins. With the use of these three drugs, the treatment stopped tumor growth completely without any side effects.

While the reports were presented at Madrid's Fundación CRIS Contra el Cáncer and published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), the test results showed that the animals used in the experiments, which were mice, continued to be free of tumors for more than 200 days post-treatment. Dr. Barbacid highlighted that this marked "the first time a complete, durable response with low toxicity has been achieved in pancreatic cancer models."

The most common type of Pancreatic cancer, which is Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, continues to be one of the most life-threatening cancers, with more than ten thousand cases every year in Spain.

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