Management of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC): Progress in the past decade and challenges for the future

Abstract

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the fourth leading cause of cancer death in the United States with 41,615 deaths in 2015 as well as in Europe where 128,000 persons are expected to die from this tumor in 2018 [1,2]. Although the worldwide incidence is low with 4.2 per 100 000, and there are important geographic differences (from 7.4 per 100 000 in North America to fewer than 1.5 in Central Africa), the incidence is rising in developed countries such as France, where it nearly doubled between 1982 and 2012 and ranges from 10.2 per 100 000 in men to 6.9 per 100 000 in women [3]. Because the mortality rate will either remain unchanged or moderately increase in upcoming years, PDAC is expected to become the third leading cause of cancer death in the EU by 2025 and the second leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States by 2030 [4,5].