Abstract
Specific immunotherapies, including vaccines with autologous tumor cells and tumor antigen-specific monoclonal antibodies, are important treatments for PC patients. To evaluate the clinical outcomes of PC-specific immunotherapy, we performed a systematic review and meta-analysis of the relevant published clinical trials. The effects of specific immunotherapy were compared with those of nonspecific immunotherapy and the meta-analysis was executed with results regarding the overall survival (OS), immune responses data, and serum cancer markers data. The pooled analysis was performed by using the random-effects model. We found that significantly improved OS was noted for PC patients utilizing specific immunotherapy and an improved immune response was also observed. In conclusion, specific immunotherapy was superior in prolonging the survival time and enhancing immunological responses in PC patients.
Highlights
Pancreatic cancer (PC) is a fatal disease with high mortality and poor prognosis
A total of 2138 papers were identified from the four databases, and, among them, 2100 publications were excluded for various reasons (452 were duplicates, 359 were review articles, 23 were letters and comments, 1080 were basic studies, 25 were nursing studies, 29 were with sample size < 6, 60 had no pancreatic cancer, and 72 were without specific immunotherapy)
25 articles reporting clinical trials of active specific immunotherapy were selected for the meta-analysis [8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32]
Summary
Pancreatic cancer (PC) is a fatal disease with high mortality and poor prognosis. In the United States, PC is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths, and it resulted in the death of 40,560 Americans in 2015 [1]. Pancreatic adenocarcinoma, which is derived from the glandular tissue of the pancreas, forms the majority of PC [2]. The median overall survival (MOS) time is 4–6 months in patients with metastatic disease, and the 5-year survival rate of patients following R0 pancreatic surgery is less than 20% [3]. The symptoms of PC typically occur late; as such, patients are diagnosed in advanced stages. The high mortality rate of patients with PC can partially be attributed to the lack of effective therapies.
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