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| How open is the therapeutic horizon for pancreatic cancer patients? |
| Holger Kalthoff |
Institute for Experimental Cancer Research, Christian-Albrechts-University, Kiel, Germany
E-mail address: hkalthoff@email.uni-kiel.de |
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Abstract In the nineties of the last century, it was typical for an article about pancreatic cancer to start with an introductory remark, that this malignancy is a very desperate one and that surgery is the only curative option. But it was also obvious that surgery was not really curative and most importantly, not feasible in the majority of cases. In the last two decades, we observed a dramatic increase in research on pancreatic cancer (e.g. more than 65000 articles mentioning pancreatic cancer in PubMed only in the last decade), and clearly, there is scientific progress. This accounts for (i) genetically defined subtypes (for an overview on the various studies [1]), for (ii) precursor lesions like pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasias (PanINs), intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasm (IPMN) and acinar-ductal metaplasia (ADM) [2], for (iii) comprehensive characterization of the tumor microenvironment [3], for (iv) animal models – both genetically engineered mouse models (GEMMs) and xenotransplant systems [4], for (v) complex in vitro systems like spheroids, organoids, complex co-cultures, chip-based 3D-models [5], and for (vi) the impact of the microbiome [6] as well as for (vii) the metabolic implications [7] and finally, for (viii) the biomarker field which has shown progress beyond the tumor marker carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA19-9) [8].
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2022, Vol. 21 
