Future therapies for pancreatic carcinoma: Insights into cancer precision medicine

World J Gastroenterol. 2022 Jun 14;28(22):2523-2526. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v28.i22.2523.

Abstract

Pancreatic carcinoma (PC) has one of the highest rates of cancer-related death worldwide. Except for surgery, adjuvant chemotherapy, chemoradiotherapy, and immunotherapy have shown various efficacies depending on the stage of the patient. We read the review "Current and emerging therapeutic strategies in pancreatic cancer: Challenges and opportunities" and offer some opinions that may improve its precision and completeness. This review presents a map of appropriate therapies for PC at different stages. Based on the clinical trial outcomes mentioned in the review, we evaluated the potential therapeutic options for PC and helped explain the contradictory efficacy between different programmed cell death protein 1/programmed cell death ligand 1 clinical trials, which may have resulted from the unique features of PC. Although R0 resection and adjuvant chemotherapy are still the gold standards for PC, new modalities, with or without clinical validation, are needed to establish more specific and precise treatments for PC.

Keywords: Chemotherapy; Future therapies; Immunotherapy; Pancreatic carcinoma; Radiochemotherapy.

Publication types

  • Review

MeSH terms

  • Chemotherapy, Adjuvant
  • Humans
  • Neoadjuvant Therapy / methods
  • Pancreatic Neoplasms* / pathology
  • Precision Medicine*