Pancreatic Disorders

Dear Colleagues,

Disorders of the pancreas are a major health issue for humans across the world, irrespective of the socio-economic status. These include chronic and acute pancreatitis as well as pancreatic cancers of different histologies. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is especially fatal, with a dismal five year survival rate; this is due to the difficulties in early detection of this disease and the lack of reliable biomarkers to predict the prognosis as well as potential response to therapy. Further, the highly dense and desmoplastic stroma of pancreatic neoplasms significantly reduce the accessibility of drugs to the cancer cells, hampering the therapeutic efficacy. The stromal cells of the ductal adenocarcinomas are thought to promote metastasis as well as response to therapy, but this issue has been questioned lately. The role of cancer stem cells or tumor initiating cells in the genesis and progression of pancreatic cancer is also not fully elucidated. This special thematic issue can be expected to cover the basic biology and therapeutic strategies to combat pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas, as well as the contribution of pancreatitis to the genesis of this disease. Other relevant aspects like the contribution of tumor stroma, cancer stem cells, behavior correlates such as smoking, potential biomarkers for predicting the progression, and response to therapy of PDACs, etc. will be covered in this issue. We expect that this Special Issue will provide the latest information of the above topics and will be of interest to those scientists and clinicians working in the area of pancreatic disorders.

Prof. Dr. Srikumar Chellappan
Prof. Dr. Jaya Padmanabhan
Guest Editors

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