Abstract
Pancreatic cancer has an extremely low prognosis, which is attributable to its high aggressiveness, invasiveness, late diagnosis, and lack of effective therapies. Among all the drugs joining the fight against this type of cancer, microtubule-targeting agents are considered to be the most promising. They inhibit cancer cells although through different mechanisms such as blocking cell division, apoptosis induction, etc. Hereby, we review the functions of microtubule cytoskeletal proteins in tumor cells and comprehensively examine the effects of microtubule-targeting agents on pancreatic carcinoma.
Highlights
Specialty section: This article was submitted to Cancer Molecular Targets and Therapeutics, a section of the journal Frontiers in Oncology
We review the functions of microtubule cytoskeletal proteins in tumor cells and comprehensively examine the effects of microtubule-targeting agents on pancreatic carcinoma
This review focuses on the functions of microtubule cytoskeletal proteins in tumor cells and comprehensively examines the effects of microtubule-targeting agents on Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC)
Summary
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a malignant tumor and the fourth leading cause of tumor-related death in the world. It has a 5-year survival rate of 6% to 7% [1,2,3]. PDAC is the 12th most diagnosed malignancy worldwide. Radical surgery is considered to be the first-line treatment of early-stage PDAC [7]. Even upon diagnosing PDAC at an early stage, only 9.7% of patients can receive surgical treatment. For advanced-stage PDAC patients (diagnosed in 85% of cases), chemotherapy is the only treatment option [5, 8]
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