The prognosis of pancreatic cancer is poor, with less than 5 percent of diagnosed patients being alive 5 years after diagnosis, and complete remission being extremely rare. There are also very few treatment options available, and pancreatic cancer is considered clinically unmet need.

Pharmatest offers an orthotopic pancreatic cancer model that is suitable for testing the efficacy of drug compounds against primary tumor growth and responds to clinically relevant treatment (gemcitabine). The model involves a surgical procedure where human pancreatic adenocarcinoma cells are inoculated into the pancreas of immunodeficient mice. The major advantage of using orthotopic models is the proper tissue microenvironment that is known to affect tumor growth, metastasis and drug resistance.

At the end of the experiment the animals are euthanized and the primary tumor and selected organs are collected for further analysis. From histological sections several additional parameters can be studied immunohistochemically, including angiogenesis, hypoxia, proliferation rate and apoptosis.