ABSTRACT

Pancreatic cancer remains a challenge due to lack of early diagnosis and effective adjuvant therapy. With limited advances in the overall survival rate of patients following conventional treatments such as resection, radiation and chemotherapy, several groups including our own have explored a number of other therapeutic modalities including hormonal treatment. Our approach using sex-steroid analogs such as 6-methylenic steroids is based on the observations that carcinoma of pancreas is responsive to androgens and estrogens. Recently, we observed that experimental manipulations of steroid structure resulted in  inhibition of pancreatic  tumor growth as in prostate and breast cancer cells. This review discusses the current status and the relevance of steroids in pancreatic cancer therapy.