Current Advances and Outlooks in Immunotherapy for Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma

Overview

Journal Mol Cancer

Publisher Biomed Central

Specialties Molecular Biology
Oncology

Date 2020 Feb 17

PMID 32061257

Citations 97

Authors

Jia-Qiao Fan

Meng-Fei Wang

Hai-Long Chen

Dong Shang

Jugal K Das

Jianxun Song

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is an incurable cancer resistant to traditional treatments, although a limited number of early-stage patients can undergo radical resection. Immunotherapies for the treatment of haematological malignancies as well as solid tumours have been substantially improved over the past decades, and impressive results have been obtained in recent preclinical and clinical trials. However, PDAC is likely the exception because of its unique tumour microenvironment (TME). In this review, we summarize the characteristics of the PDAC TME and focus on the network of various tumour-infiltrating immune cells, outlining the current advances in PDAC immunotherapy and addressing the effect of the PDAC TME on immunotherapy. This review further explores the combinations of different therapies used to enhance antitumour efficacy or reverse immunodeficiencies and describes optimizable immunotherapeutic strategies for PDAC. The concordant combination of various treatments, such as targeting cancer cells and the stroma, reversing suppressive immune reactions and enhancing antitumour reactivity, may be the most promising approach for the treatment of PDAC. Traditional treatments, especially chemotherapy, may also be optimized for individual patients to remodel the immunosuppressive microenvironment for enhanced therapy.

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