Grandfather with pancreatic cancer beats the odds with clinical trial

Hernando Salcedo was surprised when he noticed his stomach swelling in May 2025. The 83-year-old grandfather had always been healthy and active. He'd had some hip pain recently, but thought it was his age. The swelling came out of nowhere and didn't have a clear cause.

He visited his doctor, but an endoscopic ultrasound wasn't able to identify the cause of his pain and swelling. He was referred to a gastroenterologist, who ordered an MRI. Two days later, he received a devastating diagnosis: Stage III pancreatic cancer.

"It was very hard" to hear that diagnosis, Salcedo told CBS News. Most Stage III pancreatic cancer patients survive just months after being diagnosed, with a five-year survival rate of just 15%, according to the American Cancer Society. Surgery can be effective in removing the cancer, but Salcedo wasn't a candidate for such a procedure. The only available treatment option was aggressive chemotherapy aimed at extending his life, not curing the cancer.

He began chemotherapy at the Miami Cancer Institute in July 2025, only to quickly suffer severe side effects. He couldn't eat and lost weight. His son Mauricio said his father went from someone who would walk 2 or 3 miles every morning to a man who could barely leave the house.

"I've never seen my dad in bed for that amount of time, where he can't even get up," Mauricio said.

Salcedo was in pain and often felt worse than he had before his diagnosis. Previously, he was uncomfortable. But now he was barely able to function.

While Salcedo was struggling through chemotherapy, his case was presented to an expert panel at Miami Cancer Institute. These panels allow for discussion of innovative treatments, including clinical trials, said Dr. Ripal Gandhi, the radiologist and oncologist who treated Salcedo.

The panel determined Salcedo was a candidate for a clinical trial that was testing a new chemotherapy delivery device from medical company RenovoRX. Typically, chemo is administered intravenously, spreading through the whole body. But "pancreatic cancer has dense tissue, and there's not a lot of blood supply to it, and therefore a lot of the chemo doesn't get" to the actual tumor with this method, Gandhi explained.

RenovoRX's RenovoCath system, which was first cleared for use by the FDA in 2014, aims to deliver the chemotherapy more precisely. A catheter with two balloons is placed in the artery nearest the tumor. The catheter is used to deliver chemotherapy as close as possible to the tumor, while the balloons isolate its blood flow.

Previous research showed the system reduced side effects