Next Viable Routes to Targeting Pancreatic Cancer Stemness: Learning from Clinical Setbacks.

ABSTRACT: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a devastating and highly aggressive malignancy. Existing therapeutic strategies only provide a small survival benefit in patients with PDAC. Laboratory and clinical research have identified various populations of stem-cell-like cancer cells or cancer stem cells (CSCs) as the driving force of PDAC progression, treatment-resistance, and metastasis. Whilst a number of therapeutics aiming at inhibiting or killing CSCs have been developed over the past decade, a series of notable clinical trial setbacks have led to their deprioritization from the pipelines, triggering efforts to refine the current CSC model and exploit alternative therapeutic strategies. This review describes the current and the evolving models of pancreatic CSCs (panCSCs) and the pote

SUBMITTER: Tsai KK 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6571629 | biostudies-literature | 2019 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature