Abstract:

Pancreatic neoplasm, especially pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma tends to be with bad prognosis due to higher grade malignancy and metastasis. Formerly researches suggested that cancer stem cells play an important part in the initiation and process of pancreatic cancer, so that, well understanding on the mechanism of pathogenesis will contribute to a direct treatment on it. Complex signal pathways and transcription factors determined the differentiation of precursor cells during the development of pancreas, whereas, also involved in pancreatic malignant changes, which could be used as markers tracking cancer stem cells. Moreover, several special proteins were also employed as tools for pancreatic cancer stem cells screening. In this text, we reviewed origination and identification of pancreatic cancer stem cells, as well as targeted therapy.

Key words: Pancreatic carcinoma, Stem cells, Cancer stem cells, Signal pathways, Targeted therapy