Fibrosis within pancreatic cancer impairs therapeutic efficacy of nanomedicine

What is it about?

The use of nanomedicine (medical applications of nanotechnology) in cancer treatment has gained much interest, but certain tumors such as pancreatic cancer seem refractory. By devising a simple animal model which demonstrates increased fibrosis, a prominent characteristic of pancreatic cancer, we show that increased fibrosis results in reduced therapeutic efficacy of nanomedicine.

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Why is it important?

Most cell-line based xenograft models of pancreatic cancer demonstrate little fibrosis, which is a prominent characteristic of this tumor. Though genetically modified murine models have been devised which recapitulate human pathology, some drawbacks are that they are time-consuming, expensive, and labor intensive. We report a simple cell-line based model that can be used to study the role of fibrosis in pancreatic cancer pathogenesis and treatment.