Pancreatic cancer: a review on biology, genetics and therapeutics

2014-11-17Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer death in the United States and remains a major unsolved health problem in the 21st century. Since it lacks specific symptoms in the beginning of its development and diagnostic methods are limited, the disease is often detected during its formative stages. As a result, the disease prognosis is extremely poor. Consequently not many patients have resectable disease and survival rate is low. Even though combination therapies may have short-term effects, conventional treatments such as surgery, radiation, chemotherapy, or combinations of these, has little long-term impact on pancreatic cancer due to its intense resistance to all extant treatments. Almost all patients who have pancreatic cancer develop metastases and lose their battle to cancer. Researchers have been studying the challenges in the field addressing many hurdles and opportunities. They have realized that developing a detailed understanding of the molecular biology and genetics of pancreatic cancer, generating refined animal models and investigating signaling pathways involved in cellular growth, survival and differentiation during the disease course will be effective in analysis of this complex disease. Such strategies seem to hold a great promise in diagnosis prevention and treatment of this disease