An Overview on Immunotherapy of Pancreatic Cancer

Pancreatic cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer mortality in both men and women. Approximately 32,000 Americans each year will develop and also die from this disease . Despite aggressive surgical and medical management, the mean life expectancy is approximately 15–18 months for patients with local and regional disease, and 3–6 months for patients with metastatic disease 1-2. Even in case of radical surgery it is associated with a poor prognosis and a 5-year survival rate of less than 4%. Early detection methods are under development but do not yet exist in practice for pancreatic cancer. Therefore, most patients present with advanced disease that cannot be cured by surgery (pancreaticoduodenectomy). Clinically, pancreatic cancer is characterized by rapid tumor progression, early metastatization and unresponsiveness to most conventional treatment modalities. In a recent analysis using a database from 1973 to 2003 based on modeled period analysis, 5-year survival of pancreatic cancer patients was 7.1% and 10-year survival was below 5%3. The survival rate is apparently related to the disease stage with a low rate at 1.6–3.3% among patients with distant metastases. Curative resection remains the most important factor determining outcome for resectable tumors. However, the resection rate for pancreatic carcinoma is only 10% and the overall five-year survival rate after resection is still only 10 to 20%. Early diagnosis and effective treatment to control the advanced stages of disease may prolong the survival rate of pancreatic cancer. Otherwise pancreatic cancer remains a disease with high mortality despite numerous efforts that have been made to improve its survival rates.