‘Little House on the Prairie’ Legacy: Actress Melissa Gilbert, 60, Says Pancreatic Cancer Advocacy Is Her ‘Passion’ After Losing Michael Landon & Patrick Swayze

Understanding Pancreatic Cancer

• Actress Gilbert, who once played Laura Ingalls Wilder in the 1970 series “Little House on the Prairie, is continuing to raise awareness for pancreatic cancer years, and decades, after the passings of her beloved co-star Michael Landon and friend Patrick Swayze.
• Pancreatic cancer is a type of cancer that forms in the pancreas. It is more challenging to treat because symptoms usually don’t present themselves until the cancer has spread or metastasized. Symptoms may include weight gain, back pain, and jaundice.
• Early-stage pancreatic cancer tumors don’t appear on imaging scans, and people typically don’t experience symptoms until the disease has progressed. The pancreas’ location in the abdomen makes it harder to find tumors.
• Treatment options for pancreatic cancer may include surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, and targeted therapy.

After losing actors Michael Landon and Patrick Swayze to pancreatic cancer, Melissa Gilbert, known for playing Laura Ingalls Wilder in the 1970s series "Little House on the Prairie," has dedicated her time to help raise awareness and research funding for those battling the same disease. Gilbert, who has since teamed up with the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN), an organization dedicated to fighting pancreatic cancer, exclusively spoke with People about losing her fellow co-star Landon at age 54 and close friend Swayze at age 57, in a recent interview. She told the celebrity news outlet, "We read about it, we hear about it from a distance, but until it touches you close to home, which it did with me, I personally did not realize how brutal it can be." What You Need to Know About Pancreatic Cancer Gilbert's clothing and home goods brand Modern Prairie is now working together with PanCAN  to help raise money and awareness for the disease, and the products became available for purchase this week. She explained to People, "My work with PanCAN is a passion of mine and important to me because of the people I've lost, whom I've known and loved, to pancreatic cancer." Gilbert continued, "Whatever I can do to support the organization. It can be a scary world when you think about all that stuff that's out there. So why shouldn't we all put our heads together, put our pocketbooks together, put our hearts together, and do whatever we can to eradicate this scourge that is cancer, and especially pancreatic cancer." As for Landon's passing and what led up to it, Gilbert told People, "I'd seen Michael have meningitis, I'd seen him with broken bones, I'd seen him with a lot of illnesses over the course of our time together. But this [pancreatic cancer] took him and decimated him so fast. "This man was the epitome of physical wellbeing. I always described him as an upside down triangle, so strong, in such great shape, so healthy. And to see it happen so quickly and so almost violently, it felt like an enemy I wanted to defeat.” RELATED: "I Am Aching For Him!": Melissa Gilbert On How She Pines For Her "Little House On The Prairie" Pa Michael Landon Decades After Actor’s Passing With regard to Swayze's passing, she said, "Literally nothing has brought this man down and this is going to do it?He was able to fight for a lot longer than Michael Landon was able to. "But still…You see them before and you see the pictures of them as they're going through it and it is devastating." She said pancreatic cancer "killed two of the strongest, most extraordinarily extraordinary physical specimens of men I'd ever known in my life." "Athletic, talented, I mean, you name it. To me, these guys were pillars, almost like superheroes. And to see something like that take them the way it did," Gilbert continued. "And it's not just the person going through it. I'm watching a whole family suffer along with both of these men as they are suffering in a way that is indescribable."

Expert Resources On Pancreatic Cancer

• Detecting Pancreatic Cancer Early Is Crucial
• Immunotherapy Offers New Hope for Fighting Pancreatic Cancer
• 3 Key Pancreatic Cancer Red Flags to Look Out For; Some Were Present in Alex Trebek & Patrick Swayze
• Pancreatic Cancer Treatment Just Became a Lot More Accessible; New Platform Is Designed to Test Multiple Therapies at the Same Time
• Big News for PARP Inhibitors: They Can Work in Pancreatic Cancer, Too

Michael Landon's Courageous Fight

Household name and major heartthrob between the 60s and 80s Michael Landon battled pancreatic cancer which spread to his liver and was inoperable at the time of diagnosis. He announced his advanced stage pancreatic cancer diagnosis 33 years ago, and died just three months later. RELATED: Remembering Actor Michael Landon, Who Died From Pancreatic Cancer 33 Years Ago Landon received chemotherapy treatment, but the prognosis was grim. Nevertheless, the handsome TV star handled the diagnosis with humor and grace. "I think you have to have a sense of humor about everything," he said at a 1991 press conference. "I don't find this particularly funny, but if you're going to try to go on, you're going to try to beat something, you're not going to do it standing in the corner." Landon, who was married three times, is survived by his wife Cindy, who was with him at his bedside when he died, and nine children from his three marriages. "He was laughing and making jokes up until the last minute,” Cindy, now 67, previously said . “There was never self-pity for himself, there was never anger. He was always upbeat."

Patrick Swayze's Brave Battle

As for Patrick Swayze, his battle with the disease began when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in March 2008. Before he passed, Swayze shared that he started experiencing symptoms of pancreatic cancer in December 2007 when he dealt with digestive issues. Again, pancreatic cancer often presents subtle symptoms early on, making it hard to notice.

In his memoir, he noted that he thought he was feeling bloated and that the feeling would eventually subside. “I had been having some digestive trouble," he wrote . “It was mostly acid reflux and a kind of bloated feeling for a few weeks. I’ve had a sensitive stomach my whole life, so I hadn’t thought much of it, but lately, I just couldn’t shake the constant discomfort.” He was officially diagnosed a few months later. After an 18-month-long cancer battle, he died from the disease.

Learning about Pancreatic Cancer

Pancreatic cancer is an aggressive disease that is difficult to detect because symptoms, including jaundice and weight loss, typically present at a later stage in the cancer’s development. In a previous interview with SurvivorNet, Dr. Anirban Maitra , the co-leader of the Pancreatic Cancer Moon Shot at MD Anderson Cancer Center, explains what he typically sees when patients develop this disease. “Because the pancreas is inside the abdomen often doesn’t have symptoms that would tell you that something is wrong with your pancreas,” he says. “By the time individuals walk into the clinic with symptoms like jaundice, weight loss, back pain or diabetes, it’s often very late in the stage of the disease.” Detecting Pancreatic Cancer Early Is Crucial Parents, siblings and children of someone with pancreatic cancer are considered high risk for developing the disease because they are first-degree relatives of the individual. PGVs (pathogenic germline variants) are changes in reproductive cells (sperm or egg) that become part of the DNA in the cells of the offspring. Germline variants are passed from parents to their children, and are associated with increased risks of several cancer types, including pancreatic, ovarian and breast cancers. Germline mutations in ATM, BRCA1, BRCA2, CKDN2A, PALB2, PRSS1, STK11 and TP53 are associated with increased risk of pancreatic cancer. Jessica Everett , a genetic counselor at NYU Langone’s Perlmutter Cancer Center, encourages people in this category to look into possible screening options. “If you’re concerned about pancreatic cancer in your family, start by talking to a genetic counselor to learn more about your risk and what options you have,” Everett said. RELATED: For Pancreatic Cancer Patients Like Alex Trebek, New Research Suggests Resistance to Chemotherapy Can Be Reversed & Survival Rates Improved Additionally, note that up to ten percent of pancreatic cancer cases are caused by inherited genetic syndromes. So, if two or more members of your family have had pancreatic cancer, or if you have pancreatic cysts, it’s worth asking your doctor to check for pancreatic cancer since you’re at high risk.

Progress in Pancreatic Cancer

Progress has been made over the last few years in the world of pancreatic cancer treatments. One clinical trial recently found that the drug Onivyde, in combination with chemotherapy in the so-called Nalirifox regimen, helped patients live longer compared with chemotherapy in previously untreated patients with metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (mPDAC), according to Ipsen , the pharmaceutical company that bought the drug. RELATED: Alex Trebek’s Transparency About Pancreatic Cancer Battle Caused "Tremendous Spike” In Awareness & Helped Many Understand the Disease "The prognosis for people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer is extremely poor and we plan to submit these new findings to the regulatory authority as, if approved, we believe this regimen could offer up an important new treatment option for people living with an aggressive and hard-to-treat cancer," Howard Mayer, Executive Vice President and Head of Research and Development for Ipsen, said . "We thank the patients who participated in the study, their families and their healthcare teams." The drug is currently approved in the U.S., Europe, and Asia in combination with fluorouracil and leucovorin as a treatment for mPDAC after disease progression and following gemcitabine-based therapy. According to the American Cancer Society’s Cancer Facts & Figures 2024 , the five-year relative survival rate for pancreatic cancer [for all stages], which develops in the pancreas and is known as the “silent disease,” is estimated to be 13%, a number experts with the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network (PanCAN) previously said is more than double the rate from 10 years ago, which was approximately 6%. Meanwhile, a study recently published in the journal Nature Materials and titled “Engineered matrices reveal stiffness-mediated chemoresistance in patient-derived pancreatic cancer organoids,” says that targeting drugs in the microenvironment around a tumor can assist in how patients react to treatment. Another example of progress being made comes in the form of immunotherapy, a type of cancer treatment that uses your own immune system to fight cancer. "Up until now, immunotherapy hasn't had a big role," Dr. Allyson Ocean , a medical oncologist at Weill Cornell Medical Center, previously told SurvivorNet. Dr. Allyson Ocean explains why pancreatic cancer is so hard to treat. A clinical trial led by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, and sponsored by the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, found "combination of chemotherapy with an immunotherapy meant to unleash the anticancer capacity of the immune system was effective against one of the hardest targets in cancer care, pancreatic cancer," said Penn Medicine . "The researchers found that in 34 patients with advanced pancreatic cancer randomized to receive the immunotherapy nivolumab with two chemotherapy drugs, nab-paclitaxel and gemcitabine, had a one-year survival rate of 57.7 percent, significantly greater than the historical average of 35 percent with chemotherapy alone," the institution said. Dr. Benjamin Musher , the director of medical oncology at the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer at Baylor St. Luke's Medical Center, recently said there were currently multiple " home-grown clinical trials testing novel immunotherapies in all stages of pancreatic cancer studies underway at Baylor St. Luke's. " But only about 5 percent of patients with pancreatic cancer participate in such studies. "We know that we are not going to improve outcomes without more patients enrolling," Musher said. In addition, there are immunotherapy clinical trial innovations being made to allow for multiple immunotherapeutic approaches to be tested and compared to one or several standard-of-care options within trials. In other words, "investigational treatments can be added or dropped from the trial over time, depending on preclinical and clinical evidence." "We're encouraged by the trend toward more innovative clinical trial designs to improve the drug development process and ultimately lead to better patient outcomes," PanCAN Chief Science Officer Lynn Matrisian said in a recent article from the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network . Clinical trials , in general, are research studies that compare the most effective known treatment for a specific type or stage of a disease with a new approach. Dr. Beth Karlan , a gynecologic oncologist with UCLA Health, previously told SurvivorNet that clinical trials can play an important role for some patients' treatment, but they also serve a larger purpose. "Clinical trials hopefully can benefit you, but it's also providing very, very vital information to the whole scientific community about the effectiveness of these treatments," Dr. Karlan said. "We need everyone to be partners with us if we're ever going to truly cure cancer or prevent people from having to die from cancer." That being said, there is no guarantee you'll receive more effective treatment than the standard of care, and clinical trials certainly aren't right for everyone. You should always talk with your doctor(s) before getting involved in one. Some risks to consider are:

• The risk of harm and/or side effects due to experimental treatments
• Researchers may be unaware of some potential side effects for experimental treatments
• The treatment may not work for you, even if it has worked for others

But if you've already decided that a clinical trial is right for you or you're just beginning to explore your treatment options, you should know that SurvivorNet has a tool for you . The SurvivorNet Clinical Trial Finder : an A.I. driven tool for patients to find clinical trial options for treatment. The tool is built on top of clinicaltrials.gov , a database maintained by the U.S. government that compiles privately and publicly funded clinical trials conducted around the world, and gives access to more than 100,000+ individual clinical trials, updated daily. "Clinical trials are critical to the development of new therapies, and as we live through this extraordinary revolution in genomics, immunotherapy and targeted therapy, it's clear that one of the most pressing needs for patients, clinical trials sponsors, and researchers is simply a better way to find patients," SurvivorNet CEO Steve Alperin said . "Even one percent more people successfully enrolled in clinical trials can change the world."

Being Proactive About Your Health

It’s always a good idea to get into see your doctor if you have any concerning lingering symptoms that may be bothering you for more than a couple of weeks. It’s also imperative to get regular checkups and screenings even when you are seemingly in perfect health. The more proactive you are about your health, the more of a chance you can stay ahead of a potential diagnosis. In general, the earlier you catch your cancer, the better the prognosis. Portrait of Strength & Courage: Amy Armstrong Has A Remarkable Story About The Importance Of Being Proactive About Your Health “Don’t just leave it to the doctors to tell you what’s going to happen … yes you have to listen to them, but take your health into your own hands,” survivor Amy Armstrong previously shared with SurvivorNet.

Questions for Your Doctor

If you are facing a pancreatic cancer diagnosis, you may have questions but are unsure how to get the answers you need. SurvivorNet suggests asking your doctor the following to kickstart your journey to more solid answers.

• What type of pancreatic cancer do I have?
• Has my cancer spread beyond my pancreas? If so, where has it spread, and what is the stage of the disease?
• What is my prognosis?
• What are my treatment options?
• What side effects should I expect after undergoing treatment?
• Will insurance cover my recommended treatment?

Contributing: SurvivorNet Staff