• An estimated 42,470 Americans will be diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 2009, and over 35,240 will die from the disease.
  
  
• The incidence among African-Americans is 40 to 50 percent higher than other ethnic groups.
  
  
  
• Pancreatic cancer is one of the few cancers for which survival has not improved substantially over the past 30 years. As a result, in 2003, pancreatic cancer surpassed prostate cancer as the 4th leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States.
  
  
• Seventy-five percent of pancreatic cancer patients die within the first 12 months of the diagnosis. The 5-year survival rate is 5 percent.
  
  
• Scientific understanding of pancreatic cancer--its etiology, pathogenesis, detection, and treatment--lags far behind that of most other forms of cancer. In fact, pancreatic cancer research is where breast cancer research was in the 1930s--little understanding of the causes, no early detection, few effective treatments, and single-digit survival rates.
  
  
• In 2001, the National Cancer Institute developed `Pancreatic Cancer: An Agenda for Action'. Seven years later, only five of the report's 39 recommendations have been implemented because of a lack of funding, focus, and commitment. In the meantime, pancreatic cancer death rates have continued to increase.
  
  
• Pancreatic cancer research constitutes less than 2 percent of the National Cancer Institute's   Federal research funding, a figure far too low given the severity of the disease, its mortality rate, and how little is known about how to arrest the disease.
  
  
• Of the more than 5,000 research grants awarded annually by the Nations Cancer Institute in 2006, only 134 (approximately 3 percent) were categorized by the Institute as at least 50 percent relevant to pancreatic cancer research.
  
  
• The future supply of scientists entering this field of study is in serious jeopardy. There are currently fewer than 58 principal investigators who have multiple grants or a primary career focus on pancreatic cancer. Further, in the last 3 years, the National Cancer Institute has awarded only 5 grants for training and supporting young principal investigators in pancreatic cancer.
  
  

Source: The `Pancreatic Cancer Research and Education Act' (H.R. 745) and: American Cancer Society "Cancer Facts & Figures 2009"