Abstract
Pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a highly lethal malignancy with no known cure and limited effective therapies. Despite substantial research efforts and significant improvement in diagnostic modalities and complex pancreatic surgery, the prognosis for patients diagnosed with pancreatic cancer remains dismal with a 5-year survival of less than 5% and median survival of only 4–6 months in patients with metastatic disease (Jemal et al. 2007). The median survival of patients with localized and unresectable lesions is 8–10 months (Philip et al. 2009). The high mortality and poor clinical outcomes associated with the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer are due to the characteristically advanced stage of disease at presentation, extensive local tumor invasion, early systemic dissemination, and frequent resistance to conventional chemotherapeutic agents and radiation. In the USA alone, an estimated 43,140 new cases of PDAC will be diagnosed in 2010. The annual death rate will approach the annual incidence rate with 36,880 patients estimated to succumb to pancreatic cancer in 2010. The lack of substantial progress in improving mortality associated with PDAC portends the need for novel treatment strategies and research efforts aimed at elucidating the underlying mechanisms for pancreatic tumorigenesis, metastasis, and chemoresistance.
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Proctor, E.N., Simeone, D.M. (2012). Pancreatic Cancer Stem Cells. In: Scatena, R., Mordente, A., Giardina, B. (eds) Advances in Cancer Stem Cell Biology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-0809-3_12
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