Pancreatic
adenocarcinoma is one of the most aggressive
malignancies and the fourth leading cause of
cancer-related mortality in the United States. The majority of patients are diagnosed at advanced stage with inoperable locally advanced
tumors or metastatic disease, and palliative
chemotherapy remains the best therapeutic option for these patients. Despite intensive clinical and pre-clinical research over the last few years, the combination of the anti-metabolite
drug gemcitabine with the targeted agent
erlotinib, is considered standard of care in the treatment of these patients, with only minimal or modest efficacy. Therefore, novel therapeutic approaches are currently under clinical investigation in an attempt to produce more definite results for this fatal disease. In this paper we summarize five most interesting research abstracts as presented at the 2013 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting. In two studies,
nimotuzumab, a
monoclonal antibody against
epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) (Abstract #4009) and
bavituximab, a
monoclonal antibody against
phosphatidylserine (Abstract #4054) are tested in combination with
gemcitabine in patients with advanced
pancreatic cancer. Abstract #4012 is a study of
gemcitabine with
vismodegib, a novel hedgehog pathway inhibitor, whereas in Abstract #4035, toxicity and efficacy results of
sunitinib in combination with
gemcitabine in patients with pancreatic
adenocarcinoma are presented. Lastly, safety results of
pimasertib, a novel
mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase (
MEK) inhibitor, combined with the standard
gemcitabine are presented in Abstract #4041.