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Tel Aviv professor reveals treatment to kill 90% of pancreatic cancer cells

Throughout the study, which was conducted on mice, the cancer was completely eradicated.

By Joseph Wolkin, World Israel News

Professor Malka Cohen-Armon and her team of researchers at Tel Aviv University have developed a treatment that can kill up to 90 percent of pancreatic cancer cells.

The treatment would destroy the deadly cells, all thanks to two weeks straight of daily injections, according to a study published in the Oncotarget journal.

“Evidence is presented for a substantial reduction (80%-to-90%) of PANC1 cancer cells in xenografts, measured 30 days after the treatment with PJ34 has been terminated,” the study’s abstract reads.

“Benign cells infiltrated into the PANC1 tumors (stroma) were not affected. Growth, weight gain and behavior of the treated nude mice were not impaired during, and 30 days after the treatment with PJ34.”

The new therapy treatment is being developed by Cohen-Armon, as well as Dr. Talia Golan, who works at the Cancer Research Center within Tel HaShomer’s Sheba Medical Center, the largest hospital in Israel.

The 14 days of injections would insert PJ34 through an IV, destroying the cancer cells during mitosis or cell division.

Throughout the study, which was conducted on mice, the cancer was completely eradicated, Cohen-Armon said in an interview with The Jerusalem Post.

“This molecule causes an anomaly during mitosis of human cancer cells, provoking rapid cell death,” Cohen-Armon told the Post. “Thus, cell multiplication itself resulted in cell death in the treated cancer cells.”

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The treatment might even be able to attack other types of cancers.

However, the treatment will probably not reach the human stage of trials to be approved for at least two years. It will need to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration before advancing to that stage.

Pancreatic cancer is considered to be a rare form of cancer, with less than 200,000 cases in the United States each year.

However, it is one of the more deadly ones. The five-year survival rate is only 7 percent, according to the American Cancer Society.