DURHAM, N.C., Dec. 06, 2021 — Cancer Advances, Inc., a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company developing therapeutics for gastrointestinal cancers, announces a new publication in Frontiers in Oncology, section Gastrointestinal Cancers: Gastric & Esophageal Cancers.

The gastrointestinal peptide gastrin has been shown to stimulate growth of gastric cancer through the cholecystokinin-B receptor (CCK-BR), a receptor that is expressed in at least 56.6% of human gastric cancers. The researchers evaluated the effects of PAS (Polyclonal Antibody Stimulator), a Phase 3 ready cancer vaccine that induces antibodies to gastrin, alone or in combination with a Programed Death-1 antibody (PD-1 Ab) in immune competent mice bearing YTN-16 gastric tumors.

The incidence of pancreatic cancer is increasing significantly and will soon become the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States. We have previously
shown that the gastrointestinal peptide gastrin, which is only expressed in the fetal pancreas and not in the adult pancreas, is activated during pancreatic carcinogenesis
where it stimulates growth in an autocrine fashion. In this investigation, we used transgenic LSL-KrasG12D/þ; P48-Cre mice that develop precancerous pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PanIN) lesions and pancreatic cancer over time. Starting at 3 months of age, mice were either left untreated (control) or were treated with a gastrin-targeted vaccine,
polyclonal antibody stimulator (PAS 250 mg) followed by a monthly booster until the mice reached 8 months of age when pancreata were excised, and analyzed by histology for PanIN grade in a blinded fashion. Highgrade PanIN-3 lesions were significantly less in PAStreated mice (P ¼ 0.0077), and cancers developed in 33% of the control mice but only in 10% of the PAStreated
mice. Compared with the control mice, fibrosis was reduced by >50%, arginase positive M2 macrophages were reduced by 74%, and CD8þ T cells were increased
by 73% in the pancreas extracellular matrix in PAS-treated mice.