Pancreatic Cancer Action Network Launches Precision Promise

October 15, 2020

The Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN) has announced the launch of Precision Promise, the adaptive clinical trial platform for pancreatic cancer patients. PanCAN’s Precision Promise was envisioned with a nationwide team of clinicians, researchers, and diagnostic and drug developers to test novel treatment options for pancreatic cancer patients and get them to patients faster, transforming the way clinical research is done.

Every pancreatic cancer treatment available today was approved through a clinical trial; however, standard trials are slow, costly, and have only had a 10% success rate over the last 20 years. PanCAN’s clinical trial platform is designed to enable the development of new treatments more efficiently than standard pancreatic cancer trials by testing multiple experimental therapies at the same time. Through Precision Promise, metastatic pancreatic cancer patients may have the opportunity to receive both first- and second- line treatment options in one clinical trial. As a late-stage platform, the potential for new drug approvals by the FDA is built into the model. The statistical design of Precision Promise was led by statistician Dr. Donald Berry (Berry Consultants), who designed the I-SPY breast cancer trials and has over 400 peer-reviewed publications.

“Pancreatic cancer patients don’t have time to wait for new treatments to be approved through the standard clinical trial model,” said Julie Fleshman, JD, MBA, PanCAN’s president and CEO. “As the first pancreatic cancer nonprofit organization to develop, sponsor, and lead an adaptive clinical trial platform, we are disrupting the current clinical trial system in order to accelerate progress for patients fighting this disease.”