Prognostic factors in pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer is a frequent and lethal disease ranking fourth as a cause of cancer-related death in Western countries. There are patients, though, who respond well to chemotherapy and have a prolonged survival. There is an effort towards identification of specific characteristics of these tumor cells in order to identify those patients who will benefit from chemotherapy and use them as prognostic or predictive factors. This review is an update on the 2013 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting regarding the most important developments in this field for pancreatic cancer, as they were reported in Abstracts #4006, #4016, #4046, and #4060 and a discussion is presented about their application in clinical praxis.