Personalized medicine in sporadic pancreatic cancer without homologous recombination-deficiency: Are we any closer?

Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is the fourth leading cause of cancer related death in the United States. Most patients are diagnosed at a late stage and despite recent advances in chemotherapeutic approaches, outcomes are poor. With the introduction of combination chemotherapy, novel biomarkers are clearly needed to identify subsets of patients likely to benefit from these therapies. Advances in our understanding of the molecular drivers of pancreatic cancer offer the hope of personalized therapy that may benefit our patients. In this review, we summarize the current knowledge about the biology of pancreatic cancer and its implication for treatment. We discuss recent advances in targeted therapies and the role of potential biomarkers in predicting response to established therapies. We also review novel therapeutic approaches that may be able to fulfill the promise of personalized therapy for pancreatic cancer.