Direct therapeutic intervention for advanced pancreatic cancer

Currently, chemotherapy is an accredited, standard treatment for unresectable, advanced pancreatic cancer (PC). However, it has been still showed treatment-resistance and followed dismal prognosis in many cases. Therefore, some sort of new, additional treatments are needed for the better therapeutic results for advanced PC. According to the previous reports, it is obvious that interventional endoscopic ultrasonography (EUS) is a well-established, helpful and low-risky procedure in general. As the additional treatments of the conventional therapy for advanced PC, many therapeutic strategies, such as immunotherapies, molecular biological therapies, physiochemical therapies, radioactive therapies, using siRNA, using autophagy have been developing in recent years. Moreover, the efficacy of the other potential therapeutic targets for PC using EUS-fine needle injection, for example, intra-tumoral chemotherapeutic agents (paclitaxel, irinotecan), several ablative energies (radiofrequency ablation and cryothermal treatment, neodymium-doped yttrium aluminum garnet laser, high-intensity focused ultrasound), etc., has already been showed in animal models. Delivering these promising treatments reliably inside tumor, interventional EUS may probably be indispensable existence for the treatment of locally advanced PC in near future.