Pancreatic cancer: Promise for personalised medicine?

Gemcitabine-based therapy for pancreatic cancer using the squalenoyl nucleoside monophosphate nanoassemblies

“…Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the United States with a median survival of 6 months and a dismal 5-year survival rate of 5% (Braat et al, 2012;Jemal et al, 2011;Kim et al, 2012). As conventional cancer treatments have little impact on disease course, almost all patients having pancreatic cancer develop metastases and death (Bilimoria et al, 2007;Cascinu et al, 2009).…”

Accuracy and inter-observer agreement of the Procore™ 25 gauge needle for endoscopic ultrasound-guided tissue core biopsy

“…On the other hand, when ROSE is not available or if histology is deemed to be more appropriate than cytology for clinical reasons to reach a definitive diagnosis (mediastinal and abdominal masses/lymphadenopathy of unknown origin, subepithelial lesions, suspicious autoimmune pancreatitis), EUS-FNB is favoured [32,33]. Moreover, in the era of individualized medicine, tissue core biopsy specimens seem to be more adequate than cytological ones to test for predictive molecular markers, and may become of paramount importance to guide the choice of personalized therapies [34,9].…”

“…Moreover, tissue specimens for histological examination also provide the opportunity (i) to easily immunostain the tissue, further improving differential diagnostic capabilities; (ii) to reach a specific diagnosis for benign diseases not always possible with a cytological sample, thus sparing patients from more invasive and risky procedures or costly and unnecessary follow up examinations; (iii) to potentially perform tissue profiling and/or cell culture needed to guide targeted therapies for individualized treatment of patients with cancer of the gastrointestinal tract [7][8][9].…”

Systems medicine approaches for peptide array-based protein kinase profiling: progress and prospects

“…However, other subpopulations of pancreatic cancer react to completely different types of drugs [79]. Identifying those subpopulations likely to react to one drug or another is now typically pursued one pathway or molecule at the time and is for most clinical practice considered too cumbersome for use in routine medicine [80]. However, better selection of patients can and will improve patient outcome in oncological disease, also in the 5 years to come.…”