| Every year, about 30,000 North Americans are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and almost every one of them dies from this devastating disease. In pancreatic cancer, the protein kinase B (PKB) within the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase/protein kinase B (PI3K/PKB) pathway has frequently been reported to be overexpressed. Recently, ILK has emerged as an important player in the regulation of PKB as well as other cellular processes such as invasion and muscle development. Because of the substantial impact of ILK in oncogenic processes and the involvement of the PKB pathway, we hypothesized that ILK is a therapeutic target of pancreatic cancer and that the inhibition of ILK will increase the susceptibility of pancreatic cancer cells to the cytotoxic effects of the chemotherapy agent, gemcitabine. In this study, the efficacy of a selective small molecule inhibitor of ILK, QLT0254, was investigated in combination with gemcitabine in the primary orthotopic pancreatic cancer xenograft OCIP#4. |
