Strategies to target pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer has the highest mortality rate among all major types of solid cancers. Due to early metastasis to other organs, late detection and high resistance to chemotherapy, only 5-6% of pancreatic cancer patients will survive more than 5 years after diagnosis. Critical issues for increasing patient survival are (1) to develop new methods for early detection of tumor development or cancer cell dissemination, and (2) to develop new treatment strategies that target chemoresistance and the desmoplastic reaction and make tumor cells accessible to conventional chemotherapy. In this chapter, we discuss genetic alterations that can lead to the development of pancreatic cancer, possibilities for early detection of pancreatic cancer, as well as strategies targeting signaling pathways involved in mediating resistance to chemotherapy.