Editorial
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Oncol. Dec 10, 2015; 6(6): 216-219
Published online Dec 10, 2015. doi: 10.5306/wjco.v6.i6.216
Direct therapeutic intervention for advanced pancreatic cancer
Kazuki Takakura, Shigeo Koido
Kazuki Takakura, Shigeo Koido, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Internal Medicine, the Jikei University School of Medicine, Tokyo 105-8461, Japan
Author contributions: Both authors contributed equally to this manuscript; Takakura K and Koido S conceived the issues which formed the content of the manuscript and wrote the manuscript.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors declare no conflicts of interest regarding this manuscript.
Open-Access: 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/
Correspondence to: Kazuki Takakura, MD, PhD, Division of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Department of Internal Medicine, the Jikei University School of Medicine, Nishi-Shimbashi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 105-8461, Japan. ktakakura@jikei.ac.jp
Telephone: +81-3-34331111 Fax: +81-3-34350569
Received: May 5, 2015
Peer-review started: May 12, 2015
First decision: July 10, 2015
Revised: July 21, 2015
Accepted: September 7, 2015
Article in press: September 8, 2015
Published online: December 10, 2015
Processing time: 218 Days and 4 Hours
Abstract

Currently, chemotherapy is an accredited, standard treatment for unresectable, advanced pancreatic cancer (PC). However, it has been still showed treatment-resistance and followed dismal prognosis in many cases. Therefore, some sort of new, additional treatments are needed for the better therapeutic results for advanced PC. According to the previous reports, it is obvious that interventional endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS) is a well-established, helpful and low-risky procedure in general. As the additional treatments of the conventional therapy for advanced PC, many therapeutic strategies, such as immunotherapies, molecular biological therapies, physiochemical therapies, radioactive therapies, using siRNA, using autophagy have been developing in recent years. Moreover, the efficacy of the other potential therapeutic targets for PC using EUS-fine needle injection, for example, intra-tumoral chemotherapeutic agents (paclitaxel, irinotecan), several ablative energies (radiofrequency ablation and cryothermal treatment, neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet laser, high-intensity focused ultrasound), etc., has already been showed in animal models. Delivering these promising treatments reliably inside tumor, interventional EUS may probably be indispensable existence for the treatment of locally advanced PC in near future.

Keywords: Interventional endoscopic ultrasonography, Advanced pancreatic cancer, Radiofrequency ablation, Gemcitabine, Endoscopic ultrasonography guided-fine needle injection, Dendritic cells

Core tip: Unresectable, advanced pancreatic cancer (PC) has been still showed treatment-resistance and followed dismal prognosis in many cases with conventional therapies. Therefore, some sort of new, additional treatments are needed for the better therapeutic results for advanced PC. In recent years, interventional endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS) has been developed, disseminated and used efficiently all over the world as indispensable therapeutic strategies for PC. Therapeutic trials by interventional EUS for advanced PC until now, and describe the possibilities and expectations of anti-tumor therapy for advanced PC by interventional EUS to the future through this epoch-making deployment are summarized in this Editorial.