How fast does adenocarcinoma grow??

@shewade Hi and welcome to Mayo Connect. How was the mass determined to be a reoccurrance of your pancreatic cancer? Do you have any follow up appointments scheduled to develop a treatment plan for the lung mass?

We recently dug into the literature about PDAC doubling time. Keep in mind that cells in the lab are typically fed high levels of glucose, so may grow faster, depending on glucose available to your tumor. There is very little great evidence of doubling times in situ (in the body).

The rate at which cancer cells divide is not constant, and variability in cell cycle dynamics may account for some differences in the vulnerability of tumors to chemotherapy. In situ, PDAC tumor volumes have been shown to double every 30-250 days(13, 14), whereas In vitro studies have observed cancer cell cultures doubling as fast as every 48-72 hours depending on glucose levels(11)

These numbers were taken from figures in the papers. 13. H. Furukawa, R. Iwata, N. Moriyama, Growth Rate of Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma: Initial Clinical Experience. Pancreas 22, 366–369 (2001).
14. C. Yeh et al., Tumor Growth Rate Informs Treatment Efficacy in Metastatic Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma: Application of a Growth and Regression Model to Pivotal Trial and Real-World Data. The Oncologist 28, 139–148 (2022).

11. J. Han et al., Glucose promotes cell proliferation, glucose uptake and invasion in endometrial cancer cells via AMPK/mTOR/S6 and MAPK signaling. Gynecol Oncol 138, 668–675 (2015).

Tumor Volume Doubling Time (TVDT)
• Range: Clinically observed TVDTs for primary pancreatic carcinoma lesions typically range from 64 to 255 days.
• Average/Median: A study found the mean TVDT of primary lesions to be approximately 159 days (median, 144 days).
• Advanced Stages: Another study, using measurements in advanced-stage disease, estimated the average tumor doubling time to be around 40–60 days indicating higher aggressivity in metastatic disease.

Information from researchgate.net