Exploiting the molecular subtypes and genetic landscape in pancreatic cancer: the quest to find effective drugs

Nnenna Elebo; Ebtesam A Abdel-Shafy; Stefano Cacciatore; Ekene Emmanuel Nweke

doi:10.3389/fgene.2023.1170571

Exploiting the molecular subtypes and genetic landscape in pancreatic cancer: the quest to find effective drugs

Front Genet. 2023 Sep 18:14:1170571. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2023.1170571. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Nnenna Elebo^{1

2}, Ebtesam A Abdel-Shafy^{2

3}, Stefano Cacciatore², Ekene Emmanuel Nweke¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Surgery, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa.
² Bioinformatics Unit, International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, Cape Town, South Africa.
³ National Research Centre, Cairo, Egypt.

Abstract

Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a very lethal disease that typically presents at an advanced stage and is non-compliant with most treatments. Recent technologies have helped delineate associated molecular subtypes and genetic variations yielding important insights into the pathophysiology of this disease and having implications for the identification of new therapeutic targets. Drug repurposing has been evaluated as a new paradigm in oncology to accelerate the application of approved or failed target-specific molecules for the treatment of cancer patients. This review focuses on the impact of molecular subtypes on key genomic alterations in PDAC, and the progress made thus far. Importantly, these alterations are discussed in light of the potential role of drug repurposing in PDAC.

Keywords: Pancreatic Cancer; drug repurposing; genomics; mutations; precision medicine.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

EEN is supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) (Grant number: 138367). SC is supported by the National Research Foundation (NRF) (Grant number: 138113).