Overview
The Pancreas Cancer Specialty Clinic (PCSC) defines a new standard of care for people with pancreatic cancer and seeks to minimize the obstacles that patients and their families may encounter in navigating a complex medical system.
The PCSC has a dedicated team of surgical, medical, and radiation oncologists, radiologists, pathologists, as well as nurses, symptom management and pain specialists, nutritionists, physical therapists, and social workers, all singularly devoted to the clinic’s mission.
In 2009, an international team of investigators, including SCCA’s Dr. Sunil Hingorani and his research team, discovered an unexpected mechanism that potentially explain why pancreatic cancers are so resistant to all commonly used chemotherapies. The results are now redirecting scientists to develop entirely new strategies for targeting this disease.
SCCA was formed, in part, to bring promising new treatments to patients faster. This means that people who have pancreatic cancer will find more treatment options at SCCA than might be found elsewhere, including participation in one of the clinical trials conducted at SCCA and its parent organizations, Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center and UW Medicine.