The chemotherapy drug gemcitabine shows promise in slowing the recurrence of pancreatic cancer following surgery, according to a new study. But the delayed recurrence doesn’t appear to improve survival, the researchers noted.

Researchers found that patients who received gemcitabine after surgery stayed disease-free almost twice as long as those who didn’t. Specifically, it took more than 13 months for the cancer to start growing again in people who got gemcitabine, versus about 7 months in the non-chemo group.

Based on that result, the investigators estimated that around 3 times as many patients in the chemo group would be cancer-free after 3 years (24% vs. 8%) and 5 years (17% vs. 6 %).

Findings from the 6-year-long study were reported in a recent issue of JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association.

“This finding confirms the notion that pancreatic cancer is a systemic disease even at an early stage and further emphasizes the need for effective adjuvant chemotherapy,” the study authors write. Adjuvant therapy is designed to aid surgery or other treatment actions, but doctors still aren’t certain what the best strategy is for treating pancreatic cancer after surgery.

The team of researchers — led by researchers from the Charité School of Medicine in Berlin, Germany — monitored 368 patients between 1998 and 2004 who had undergone surgical removal of their pancreatic cancer. A little more than half of them received gemcitabine for 6 months after surgery.

Although no difference was seen in overall survival between the two groups during the limited time of the study , the researchers say longer follow-up might show that gemcitabine can, in fact, help patients live longer.

An editorial accompanying the study suggests that doctors may want to discuss gemcitabine and other post-surgical options with patients. Even though they might not help them live longer, such options can have other important benefits.

“…Improved disease-free survival can offer patients with a notoriously lethal disease an opportunity to enjoy longer periods of time relatively free of symptoms,” writes Al B. Benson, MD, of the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University.

More Promising Research in Progress

Pancreatic cancer is known to be aggressive and hard to treat, and only a small percentage of patients survive more than a year after diagnosis. But researchers are actively pursuing new treatments.

The German gemcitabine study comes on the heels of other promising news about using radiation plus chemotherapy after pancreatic cancer surgery. A study from the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., found that people who received this combined treatment after surgery lived an average of about 6 months longer than people who got only surgery. The study included more than 450 patients treated at the Mayo Clinic. It was presented in January at the Gastrointestinal Cancers Symposium in Orlando.

In another promising but early finding, researchers from the University of Michigan Medical Center report that they’ve identified human pancreatic stem cells — the likely culprits behind the disease’s aggressive growth and spread. The cancer stem cell finding could lead researchers down the path toward new drugs that fight pancreatic cancer at the root without interfering with normal human stem cell function, the researchers say.

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