Pancreatic Cancer Clinical Trials & Research

MSK is a major research institution. During your treatment for pancreatic cancer, your care team may ask if you want to join a clinical trial.

What is a clinical trial?

Clinical trials are research studies that test new treatments, procedures, or devices to see how well they work. They are an important part of helping to prevent, treat, and cure cancer. Almost every cancer treatment given to patients was first tested during a clinical trial.

MSK tests new treatments for pancreatic cancer. Treatment trials test new drugs, drug combinations, devices, and ways of doing procedures, surgery, or radiation therapy.

Sometimes a clinical trial gives you access to new therapies that are not yet available at most hospitals. Talk with your doctor about whether joining a clinical trial is right for you.

Clinical trials are designed to answer questions about:

Safety
Benefits
Side effects
Whether some people are helped more than others

MSK will start a clinical trial only if our researchers think we can improve methods for cancer:

Prevention
Treatment
Diagnosis
Screening

For more information, please read Clinical Trials at MSK: What You Need to Know

How MSK is researching new pancreatic cancer treatments

We’re researching using new immunotherapy treatments for pancreatic cancer after surgery, and for metastatic pancreatic cancer. Our clinical trials are showing promise for using immunotherapy to treat advanced pancreatic cancer.

One trial explores using 2 drugs to boost the immune system as an alternative to chemotherapy. Another trial explores immunotherapy for pancreatic tumors that were removed by surgery and have mutations in the KRAS or NRAS genes.

Here are other ways MSK is exploring new treatments for pancreatic cancer:

An MSK clinical trial is testing a vaccine using messenger RNA along with another type of immunotherapy. We’re one of a few hospitals testing this treatment for pancreatic cancer.
Biomarkers are measurable materials, such as proteins and genes. We’re exploring biomarkers that help us tell the difference between benign (not cancer) and precancerous lesions in the pancreas. We’re also evaluating whether biomarkers can tell us which treatment is best. For example, a biomarker may tell us which type of chemotherapy is best for you.
We’re testing whether we can use pancreatic cancer stem cells to predict which chemotherapy treatments will be best for you.
For localized tumors we may be able to operate on, we’re evaluating a new order for treatments. For example, we’re looking at a total neoadjuvant therapy (TNT) approach.
We’re working on targeted therapies, including using a class of drugs called PARP inhibitors. They’re for people at higher genetic risk for pancreatic cancer.
We’re evaluating a new targeted therapy, zolbetuximab. It’s for people who have a substance called claudin 18.2 on the surface of their tumor cells.
We’re evaluating new treatments for pancreatic cancers related to BRCA1/2 and PALB2 genes.
We’re evaluating new maintenance treatments for pancreatic cancer. Maintenance therapy can help after cancer symptoms respond to therapy.
Through our Pancreatic Tumor Registry, we study environmental and inherited risk factors for pancreatic cancer. Many people who join this study are living with pancreatic cancer or have family members who had it.