Articles related to pancreatic cancer

Two articles on research related to pancreatic cancer have been published recently. They are:

1) Recent progress on normal and malignant pancreatic stem/progenitor cell research: therapeutic implications for the treatment of type 1 or 2 diabetes mellitus and aggressive pancreatic cancer. M Mimeault and S K Batra, Gut 2008(Oct); 57(10): 1456-68. The last two sentences of the Abstract:

The combination of drugs that target the oncogenic elements in pancreatic cancer stem/progenitor cells and their microenvironment, with the conventional chemotherapeutic regimens, could represent promising therapeutic strategies. These novel targeted therapies should lead to the development of more effective treatments of locally advanced and metastatic pancreatic cancers, which remain incurable with current therapies.

At present, only the Abstract is freely-accessible. The publisher (BMJ Publishing Group) makes all archive content older than 12 months freely available to registered users. See: BMJ Journals information centre. See also the SHERPA/RoMEO summary of copyright policies for Gut.

2) An orally bioavailable small-molecule inhibitor of Hedgehog signaling inhibits tumor initiation and metastasis in pancreatic cancer. G Feldmann and 13 co-authors, Mol Cancer Ther 2008(Sep); 7(9): 2725-35. The last sentence of the Abstract:

Pharmacologic blockade of aberrant Hedgehog signaling might prove to be an effective therapeutic strategy for inhibition of systemic metastases in pancreatic cancer, likely through targeting subsets of cancer cells with tumor-initiating ("cancer stem cell") properties.

At present, only the Abstract is freely-accessible. The publisher (American Association for Cancer Research) makes all articles available free 12 months after the date of initial publication. See: Access to AACR Publications. See also the SHERPA/RoMEO summary of copyright policies for AACR journals.