Pancreatic cancer is a highly lethal gastrointestinal disease that is becoming one of the leading causes of cancer mortality worldwide.

Despite advances in surgery, radiation therapy, immuno-oncology, and therapeutics, the 5-year survival rate for pancreatic cancer patients remains around 12%. The poor prognosis is mainly due to late diagnosis, as pancreatic cancer patients commonly don’t exhibit symptoms until an advanced stage that is beyond surgical resection. Currently, the main treatments for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer are chemotherapy, radiotherapy, and most recent clinical trials incorporate immunotherapy.

Novel anti-cancer treatments are urgently needed to improve the outcomes for both resectable and unresectable pancreatic cancer patients. Several pre-clinical studies have identified viable alternatives to the current therapies using anti-neoplastic, immunomodulating or stromal remodeling compounds that act through different molecular pathways. Promising targets directly target the tumor cells or are components of the tumor microenvironment, such as chemokines and stromal modulators as well as immunomodulating agents including agonists to activate anti-tumor immunity or reduce immune suppression. Other potential therapeutic approaches target key subcellular structures, such as the mitochondria and the endoplasmic reticulum, to disrupt cancer cell metabolism and homeostasis.

This Research Topic aims to provide a platform for researchers who work on pancreatic cancer to explore new anti-cancer compounds and therapeutic options to improve the treatment of patients affected by pancreatic cancer.

We welcome manuscripts focused on, but not limited to:
- Clinical trial studies for novel treatments for pancreatic cancer;
- in vitro and in vivo studies to investigate the molecular mechanisms accounting for antitumor effects on pancreatic cancer of novel compounds;
- New preclinical models for pancreatic cancer, including organoids and in vivo models;
- Possible candidates for drug repurposing to treat pancreatic cancer and their molecular targets;
- Strategies to induce immune or stromal modulations to improve therapeutic response.

Please note: manuscripts consisting solely of bioinformatics or computational analysis of public genomic or transcriptomic databases which are not accompanied by validation (independent cohort or biological validation in vitro or in vivo) are out of scope for this section and will not be accepted as part of this Research Topic.

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Frontiers in Oncology

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