Testing a blood cell booster to prevent infection during pancreatic cancer chemotherapy

This trial is testing tripegfilgrastim, a medication that helps your body produce more infection-fighting white blood cells, to see if it can prevent serious infections caused by chemotherapy. People with unresectable pancreatic or bile duct cancer will receive a standard chemotherapy combination, and half will also receive the medication while the other half will not. The goal is to find out whether this medication reduces the number of patients who develop dangerous febrile neutropenia—a serious drop in white blood cell count that leads to infection and fever.

Chemotherapy drugs that treat pancreatic and bile duct cancer are very strong and can dramatically lower the number of white blood cells in the body, putting patients at high risk for life-threatening infections. This medication has shown promise in other cancer types at preventing this dangerous side effect, so researchers want to test whether it works for pancreatic and bile duct cancer patients as well.