Pancreatic Cancer

Pancreatic cancer provides the opportunity for short-term endpoints as the median survival with standard of care is less than one year, with approximately 30,000 new cases and 30,000 deaths per year.  In addition, the performance of laparotomy for intraoperative radiation following AV-tk and chemo-radiation will allow assessment of biologic and clinical endpoints at 3 months post-therapy.  This includes assessment of transduction efficiency, TK expression, pathologic and immune response.  The laparotomy will also provide an opportunity to evaluate if treatment has significantly reduced tumor size, as a short-term indication of clinical response.  Surgery is the only possibility of cure for pancreatic cancer.  Currently about 5% of patients designated unresectable at diagnosis get designated respectable during laparotomy, an increase of this resectability rate would be a quantifiable positive outcome.