Pancreatic cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related death in the United States. Gemcitabine is a common treatment, but response rates are low, perhaps due in part to tumor hypoxia. We utilized (14)C-labeled gemcitabine to map distribution of the drug with respect to perfused and hypoxic regions of the tumor microenvironment in two orthotopic xenograft models of pancreatic cancer. There was only a slight reduction in gemcitabine in hypoxic areas, with ∼78% of the drug present in hypoxic compared to perfused areas. In addition, only a 4% reduction in gemcitabine was measured at >100 μm from perfused blood vessels. Thus, despite significant areas of hypoxia in these tumors, gemcitabine distribution is relatively homogenous. Ours is the first study to directly measure gemcitabine distribution within tumor tissue, demonstrating that in these models, tumor tissue does not represent a barrier to gemcitabine penetration.
Keywords: gemcitabine; hypoxia; orthotopic; pancreatic tumor; perfusion.