Research directed by Johns Hopkins showed that for patients with operable pancreatic cancers, a three-pronged combination immunotherapy treatment—consisting of the pancreatic cancer vaccine GVAX, the immune checkpoint therapy nivolumab and urelemab, an anti-CD137 agonist antibody treatment—is safe, increases the amount of cancer-killing immune system T cells in the tumors, and appears effective when given two weeks prior to cancer-removal surgery. A description of the work was published in Nature Communications.
Using intraoperative radiation to eliminate pancreatic cancer cells that have spread to areas around the pancreas, investigators at Johns Hopkins have been able to reduce the recurrence rate around the pancreas to 5%.
