Screening Technologies for Target Identification in Pancreatic Cancer

Cancers

Patrick Michl¹  Stefanie Ripka²  Thomas Gress² 

[1] Department of Gastroenterology and Endocrinology, University Hospital, Philipps-University Marburg, Baldinger Strasse, D-35043 Marburg, Germany; E-Mail

关键词: pancreatic cancer;    high-throughput screen;    microarray;    RNA interference;    loss-of-function screen;   

DOI  :  10.3390/cancers3010079

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Pancreatic cancer exhibits an extraordinarily high level of resistance to almost any kind of systemic therapy evaluated in clinical trials so far. Therefore, the identification of novel therapeutic targets is urgently required. High-throughput screens have emerged as an important tool to identify putative targets for diagnosis and therapy in an unbiased manner. More than a decade ago, microarray technology was introduced to identify differentially expressed genes in pancreatic cancer as compared to normal pancreas, chronic pancreatitis and other cancer types located in close proximity to the pancreas. In addition, proteomic screens have facilitated the identification of differentially secreted proteins in body fluids of pancreatic cancer patients, serving as possible biomarkers. Recently, RNA interference-based loss-of-function screens have been used to identify functionally relevant genes, whose knock-down has impact on pancreatic cancer cell viability, thereby representing potential new targets for therapeutic intervention. This review summarizes recent results of transcriptional, proteomic and functional screens in pancreatic cancer and discusses potentials and limitations of the respective technologies as well as their impact on future therapeutic developments.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© 2010 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.