Di Marco M, Grassi E, Durante S, Vecchiarelli S, Palloni A, Macchini M, Casadei R, Ricci C, Panzacchi R, Santini D, Biasco G. State of the art biological therapies in pancreatic cancer. World J Gastrointest Oncol 2016; 8(1): 55-66 [PMID: 26798437 DOI: 10.4251/wjgo.v8.i1.55]
Corresponding Author of This Article
Elisa Grassi, MD, Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialty Medicine, University of Bologna, Sant’Orsola-Malpighi Hospital, Massarenti Street 11, 40138 Bologna, Italy. elisa.grax@gmail.com
Research Domain of This Article
Oncology
Article-Type of This Article
Review
Open-Access Policy of This Article
This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Mariacristina Di Marco, Elisa Grassi, Sandra Durante, Silvia Vecchiarelli, Andrea Palloni, Marina Macchini, Guido Biasco, Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialty Medicine, University of Bologna, Sant’Orsola-Malpighi Hospital, 40138 Bologna, Italy
Riccardo Casadei, Claudio Ricci, Department of Medical and Surgical Sciences, University of Bologna, Sant’Orsola-Malpighi Hospital, 40138 Bologna, Italy
Author contributions: Each author contributed to this paper.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected byan in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Elisa Grassi, MD, Department of Experimental, Diagnostic and Specialty Medicine, University of Bologna, Sant’Orsola-Malpighi Hospital, Massarenti Street 11, 40138 Bologna, Italy. elisa.grax@gmail.com
Telephone: +39-051-2143812 Fax: +39-051-6364037
Received: May 28, 2015 Peer-review started: May 30, 2015 First decision: July 18, 2015 Revised: August 18, 2015 Accepted: November 17, 2015 Article in press: November 25, 2015 Published online: January 15, 2016 Processing time: 230 Days and 21 Hours
Core Tip
Core tip: Our study aims to give an overview of the progress made in molecular targeted therapy for pancreatic cancer in recent years and the current status of clinical trials in the field. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the most lethal malignancies with a five-year survival rate of approximately 5%. Several target agents have been tested in PDAC but almost all have failed to demonstrate efficacy in late phase clinical trials, even with a better understanding of PDAC molecular biology generated by large cancer sequencing initiatives in the past decade. Eroltinib (small-molecule tyrosine-kinase inhibitor of epidermal growth factor receptor) plus gemcitabine is actually the only schedule with a biological agent approved for advanced pancreatic cancer, but it resulted in a very modest survival benefit in unselected patients. In our work, we reported a summary of the main clinical trials (close and ongoing) that refer to biological therapy evaluation in pancreatic cancer treatment.
