Research you support is  Dr. Minia Hellan |
| Led a City of Hope team that reported on important advances in the fight against pancreatic cancer. |
shedding new light on an enigmatic disease  Dr. Joseph Kim |
When cancerous tumors develop in the pancreas, a patient's prognosis is generally not good: The survival rate of pancreatic cancer patients five years after diagnosis is less than one in four.
But City of Hope researchers have discovered that certain surgical steps, if taken at the right time, can improve those odds considerably.
This is just one example of the potentially lifesaving work you help make possible through your support of City of Hope.
Treatment of pancreatic cancer frequently involves removing some of a patient’s lymph nodes. Joseph Kim, M.D., assistant professor of surgery at City of Hope and senior author of the study announcing the results of this research, hoped to determine whether the number of lymph nodes removed had an impact on survival rates.
Studying nearly 2,000 cases of pancreatic cancer, City of Hope researchers led by surgical oncology fellow Minia Hellan, M.D., found that patients who had between 10 and 20 lymph nodes removed had better survival rates than did those who had fewer than 10 removed.
Dr. Kim, Dr. Hellan and their colleagues stress there are still many questions to be answered before we can understand the full impact of their findings.
However, one thing is clear: The research and discoveries you make possible are shining light on a mysterious and especially deadly form of cancer -- a light that could show the way for pancreatic cancer patients to have a better chance for a longer, healthier life.