Prestigious International Award for LCTC Investigator

Professor Paula Ghaneh has been awarded the Hirshberg Foundation Award for the Best Paper in Pancreatic Cancer by the American Pancreatic Association.

The paper, titled “ESPAC-5F: Four arm, prospective, multicentre, international randomised phase II trial of immediate surgery compared with neoadjuvant gemcitabine plus capecitabine (GEMCAP) or FOLFIRINOX or chemoradiotherapy (CRT) in patients with borderline resectable pancreatic cancer”, was published in the Journal of Clinical Oncology in May 2020 (DOI: 10.1200/JCO.2020.38.15_suppl.4505).

Professor Ghaneh was Chief Investigator of ESPAC-5F, which was funded by Cancer Research UK and is one of the many cancer portfolio studies supported by Liverpool Clinical Trials Centre.

Pancreatic cancers are often difficult to remove and can have low survival rates. The ESPAC-5F trial investigated the benefits and risks of patients receiving different forms of chemotherapy and radiation before surgery, versus immediate surgery.

Professor Ghaneh and ESPAC-5F team reported significant survival advantage for patients who received chemotherapy with or without radiation prior to surgery, compared with immediate surgery. The best survival rate at one year was seen in patients receiving FOLFRIRINOX, a combination of chemotherapy drugs. The paper recommends that pre-surgery therapies be considered for patients with borderline resectable pancreatic cancer.

Speaking about her receipt of this award, Professor Ghaneh said, “I am delighted to receive this award for our research. Patients with borderline resectable pancreatic cancer have poor survival and low resection rates and this study has demonstrated an improvement in outcome for these patients. These results will inform future trials of neoadjuvant therapy.”

Winning this international award is recognition of Professor Ghaneh’s “outstanding work in the field of pancreatic cancer research” and includes a plaque of recognition and a $1,000 dollar prize.