Pancreatic cancer research should focus on antigen presentation, targeted drug delivery.

2003 JAN 8 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- by Maria G. Essig, MS, ELS, senior medical writer - The most promising avenues of research into T cell targeting immunotherapy for pancreatic cancer are dendritic cell vaccines, methods of enhancing tumor antigen presentation, and tumor-specific antibodies coupled to toxins or chemotherapy drugs, according to a report in Expert Opinion on Biological Therapy.

"Until recently, this therapeutic strategy has been used as a single specific treatment and clinical studies have demonstrated that tumor-specific T cell responses can be induced in a subset of patients and even in patients with advanced disease," said Nils Glenjen and Oystein Bruserud at Haukeland University Hospital in Bergen, Norway. "However, it remains to be demonstrated whether these T cell responses can mediate clinically relevant antitumor reactivity."

Glenjen and Bruserud pointed out that in vitro studies on tumor cell susceptibility to T cell immunotherapy often is restricted to cancer cell lines because of the unavailability of native tumor cells from patients.

"It is therefore still a hypothesis that T cell targeting immunotherapy can be developed into an efficient therapeutic strategy in patients with inoperable pancreatic cancer," commented the authors.

A combination of approaches provides the best chances for success.

"T cell targeting ...