Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma and its Treatment Strategies

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the lethal malignancies due to the complex biology, genetic factors, over - expression of multiple biomarkers leading to multiple signaling pathways, immersed nature of tumor, lessen survival incidence from surgical resection and delayed diagnosis. The conventional treatment methods with less efficacy include chemotherapy and combinational therapy of gemcitabine with other chemotherapeutic drugs. These are some factors which demands advanced therapeutic regimens which includes oral drug which can stop progression at early stages. To address this concern, different drugs have been identified through virtual screening and experimented in-vivo and in-vitro that showed effective treatment outcomes. Capecitabine combination with different drugs has shown promising results in case of combinational therapies usage against PDAC. Advanced treatment strategies includes immunotherapy, use of monoclonal antibodies, immune checkpoint inhibitors, cancer vaccines, personalized medicine and nanotechnology based drug delivery system (DDS) which opens doors for rapid and promising results to alleviate progression of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Drug delivery through nanotechnology based drug delivery system (DDS) has been showing effective anti-tumor results to stop the progression of cancer at advanced stage of PDAC. Overall, this review suggested that advanced technologies could serve as a robust way to treat this solid malignancy as well as development of drugs (oral / effective chemotherapeutic drug) can stop this disease at early as well as at advanced stages. Keywords: PDAC; Gemcitabine; Capecitabine; Immunotherapy; Nanotechnology- based drug delivery system (DDS)