Emerging drugs in pancreatic cancer

摘要: Improving survival in patients with pancreatic cancer remains a formidable challenge. For the few localised stages of disease, intra-operative radiotherapy, adjuvant chemoradiotherapy and neo-adjuvant therapies remain non-validated benefit conferred by 5-fluorouracil-folinic acid chemotherapy over radical surgery alone is still matter debate. Gemcitabine has recently emerged as standard single agent advanced disease pharmacokinetic refinements such use fixed-dose infusion rate may further improve rather modest result figures. At present, most efforts deal development more effective doublet or triplet therapies, combining gemcitabine either conventional cytotoxic drugs--the promising being oxaliplatin--or innovative, targeted therapeutic agents. Among these agents, matrix metalloprotease inhibitors farnesyltransferase have already undergone Phase III trials, combination gemcitabine, disappointing results. However, preclinical I II studies cyclooxygenase-2 lipoxygenase inhibitors, various immunotherapeutic approaches several tyrosine kinase monoclonal antibodies against growth factors their receptors are encouraging provide some hope for cancer.