Abstract
Pancreatic cancer (PC) represents an unresolved therapeutic challenge, due to the poor prognosis and the reduced response to currently available treatments. Pancreatic cancer is the most lethal type of digestive cancers, with a median survival of 4–6 months. Only a small proportion of PC patients is curative by surgical resection, whilst standard chemotherapy for patients in advanced disease generates only modest effects with considerable toxic damages. Thus, new therapeutic approaches, specially specific treatments such as immunotherapy, are needed. In this paper we analyze recent preclinical and clinical efforts towards immunotherapy of pancreatic cancer, including passive and active immunotherapy approaches, designed to target pancreatic-cancer-associated antigens and to elicit an antitumor response in vivo.
Highlights
Pancreatic cancer (PC) represents an unresolved therapeutic challenge, due to the poor prognosis and the reduced response to currently available treatments
In this paper we have analyzed the various strategies of the immunotherapeutic approach, some of which are still used in animal models; others are already being exploited in clinical trials
Immunotherapy is certainly a promising treatment for pancreatic cancer, because it is highly speci c for cancer cells and without the side effects associated with traditional chemotherapy
Summary
Pancreatic cancer (PC) represents an unresolved therapeutic challenge, due to the poor prognosis and the reduced response to currently available treatments. Since there are different evidences that pancreatic adenocarcinomas elicit antitumor immune responses [6,7,8,9] speci c immunotherapy could be of great importance in the PC treatment. In this paper we analyze recent preclinical and clinical efforts towards immunotherapy of pancreatic cancer, BioMed Research International including passive immunotherapy approaches, such as the use of antibodies or effector cells generated in vitro, and active immunotherapic strategies, whose goal is to stimulate an antitumor response in vivo, by means of vaccination
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