Novel targets in pancreatic cancer: focus on future paths to therapy

This clinical science symposium at ASCO 2006, co-chaired by Drs Barbara Burtness (Fox Chase Cancer Center, USA) and Christophe Louvet (Höpital Saint Antoine, France), focused on the evaluation of new targets for treatment of pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer is a devastating tobacco-related malignancy, with > 33,000 new cases expected in 2006 and a nearly equal number of deaths. Cytotoxic therapy has had little impact on a dismal overall survival in advanced disease of 6 months. Thus, the development of new therapeutics is critical. As the number of novel targeted therapeutics increases, the ability to design and conduct rational clinical trials will be of paramount importance. The presentations focused on preclinical model systems to evaluate new therapeutics for clinical testing, a laboratory analysis of the role of tissue factor in pancreatic cancer pathogenesis, and clinical data evaluating dual epidermal growth factor receptor/Her2 inhibition.