In the United States, pancreatic cancer has the highest mortality rate among all major cancers, with a 5-year survival rate of only 11 percent. Diane M. Simeone, MD, director of the Pancreatic Cancer Center at NYU Langone Health’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, serves as study chair for the Pancreatic Cancer Early Detection (PRECEDE) Consortium, an international, multi-institutional collaborative group of experts that aims to increase the 5-year survival rate to 50 percent within the next 10 years. Early detection is the key to increasing survival for people with pancreatic cancer, but previous efforts were unable to succeed in a timely manner, Dr. Simeone tells The ASCO Post.

“Our goal is to enroll 10,000 participants, so we can meaningfully answer questions about risk factors, early detection, and prevention strategies,” says Dr. Simeone, also the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Professor of Surgery in the Department of Surgery and professor in the Department of Pathology at NYU Grossman School of Medicine. “We view this as a platform to invite individuals with a diversity of expertise to work together to achieve our 50 percent survival rate goal. PRECEDE will drive advances in early detection, allowing studies to be performed, because there will be enough patients, data, and biospecimen samples to conduct them.”

Read more from The ASCO Post.