Adoptive Immunotherapy Of γδT Lymphocytes To Pancreatic Cancer

Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is an aggressive cancer with late diagnosis, fast fatal outcome and poor prognosis. It is the fourth ranking cause of cancer-related death in the world and presents increasing tendency. The disease progresses in a relatively symptom free manner, hence by diagnosis the majority of patients are in the advanced stage of disease. At present, surgical resection offers the best chance of long term survival, however, early local spread and metastatic development is a specific feature of the disease. Only a small number of patients are amenable for resection, thus the medial survival of patients without tumor resection is 6 months and 5-year survival is no more than 5%. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy have been used to improve patient survival, but because of resistance or lack of susceptivity towards chemotherapeutic drugs, outcome was only slightly improved. Although during last decade, efforts have been done to great extent, including invention of new chemotherapeutic drugs, drugs combination strategies and improvement in drug administration methods, 5-year survival remains stagnant. Simultaneously, patient' s immune system may be damaged using chemotherapy and radiotherapy. Hence investigators eagerly search other effective methods to improve pancreatic cancer patient outcome. Along with the development of tumor immunology, molecular biology and achievement of a human genome plan, a new understanding regarding tumor origin, growth and metastasis allows new methods leading to tumor biotherapy. Tumor biotherapy is a great deal accomplishment in the 20^th century, including gene therapy, immunotoxin, tumor vaccine and cytokine etc. but no improvement was obtained due to tumor escape and repression to the immune system, hence pancreatic adenocarcinoma therapy is remains a stubborn fortress of the 20th century.