ABSTRACT
Pancreatic cancer is a major disease responsible for the death of hundreds of thousands of men and women. Worldwide, there are about 230,000 new cases of pancreatic cancer yearly, and about 225,000 patients will die from this disease (Kamangar et al. 2006). Pancreatic cancer is a rapidly fatal disease with a median survival rate of 4-6 months. The death/incidence ratio of pancreatic cancer, >0.95, is the highest of all malignancies thus making it the most lethal cancer (Jemal et al. 2006). In the United States, it is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths (Jemal et al. 2010). Despite the use of surgery, radiation therapy, and various types of chemotherapy, progress in reducing the death rate for pancreatic cancer overall has remained unchanged for decades (Ko and Tempero 2005; Hochster et al. 2006). Even when diagnosed at its earliest stages and therefore amenable to complete surgical resection, long-term survival is rare with >70% of the patients succumbing to recurrent or metastatic disease (Han et al. 2006). In metastatic pancreatic cancer, standard chemotherapy with either gemcitabine or 5-›uorouracil results in response rate on the order of 10%–20%, but responses last only a few months, and time to disease progression is only 4-6 months. Therefore, existing therapies fail in a large number of patients and the need for agents that can prevent the disease or enhance current therapy is a high priority.
