Pancreatic Cancer

PC is one of the most deadly malignancies in the United States, with late clinical presentation, early metastasis, and poor prognosis. Although it takes more than 17 years for PC to progress from mutation to metastatic cancer, reliable early identification methods are lacking. If diagnosed early, providing a window of opportunity for early detection and thus potentially significantly improve overall survival. Here, we briefly describe the diagnostic strategies and the potential biomarkers for the early diagnosis of PC.

Currently, surgery and chemotherapy are still the main treatments for PC. Over the past three decades, PC has made few breakthroughs in practice compared to other cancers. Therefore, new treatment options for improvement are highly desirable. Currently, new therapeutic options such as next-generation targeted therapies, tumor microenvironment-targeted therapies, and oncolytic viral therapies are in hot development. Here, we give an overview of some treatment strategies.

With the advent of "omics" research and the global analysis of biological systems at the molecular level using high-throughput technologies, new advances have been made in improving PC diagnosis and treatment. A growing number of studies have revealed the underlying molecular mechanisms of PC, including genomic subtypes of PC, proteomic subtypes of PC, and metabolomic subtypes of PC. Here, we will outline these molecular mechanisms and list some representative molecules as potential biomarkers for early diagnosis, prediction, and prognostic indications of PC.