Trial Information

A Clinical Trial of Intratumoral Hypoxia and Its Biologic Correlates in Patients Undergoing Surgical Resection of Localized Pancreatic Cancer, Using Pre-operative Administration of the Hypoxia Marker Pimonidazole.

This study involves the intravenous (given by vein) administration of a hypoxia marker,
pimonidazole hydrochloride, approximately 24 hours before surgery for pancreatic tumor in
order to identify areas of lower oxygen content on samples of your tumour.

Pimonidazole is a drug that, when given intravenously, will attach to areas in the tumour
that is low in oxygen. When this happens, the areas that are low in oxygen can be more
easily found and studied.

We will collect tumour samples from about 100 patients to study hypoxia and other biologic
processes in clinical pancreatic cancer as well as animal (mouse) models of these cancers.
Since patient samples are being collected as part of the Pancreatic Cancer Genome project
(designed to collect 500 patient samples) we developed this companion study to characterize
patient tumours with respect to hypoxia.