"Let's Win" Aims to Reduce Research Burden for Those with Pancreatic Cancer

It’s overwhelming enough to be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which has a five-year survival rate of 6 percent, without having to look far and wide for the latest information about your disease and its potential treatments.

Anne Glauber did exactly that after she was diagnosed two years ago, and she doesn’t want others to have to follow the same path. So Glauber, a public relations executive, used her skills to make it easier for the patients who would follow in her wake.

She’s launched an online community, Let’s Win, at letswinpc.org, that will collect and share carefully vetted, science-driven information about treatment options that go beyond the traditional standard of care. Through Let’s Win, doctors, patients and researchers can share information with each other, which the goal of helping to advance both science and patients’ life spans. For patients facing this deadly cancer, Let’s Win is designed to help alleviate the burden of conducting complex research to identify alternative, potentially life-extending treatments.

Glauber debuted the site during a recent Special Conference on Pancreatic Cancer held by the American Association for Cancer Research in Orlando.

“By connecting patients directly with one another and with trailblazing researchers and clinicians, we will raise awareness about sciencedriven treatments that go beyond standard of care and increase entry into clinical trials,” says Glauber. “This is the first step in moving the needle in the fight against pancreatic cancer.”

Let’s Win will have four main sections. A My Treatment section will allow patients to describe their own treatment plans, focusing on innovative treatment options; Promising Science will highlight ongoing research and the scientists behind it; Clinical Trials will highlight recent research results and list trials that are enrolling; and Newsfeed will share up-to-the-minute news from the latest articles and scientific abstracts.

“After a pancreatic cancer diagnosis, every moment counts,” said Allyson J. Ocean, a medical oncologist and attending physician in gastrointestinal oncology at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, a Let’s Win founder and chair of its scientific advisory board. “Instead of making patients wait for studies to be completed, published, then publicized, Let’s Win will bring the science to patients on a user-friendly platform.”