Notch Signaling Pathway in Pancreatic Cancer Progression

Abstract

Pancreatic cancer (PC) is one of the highly aggressive malignances in the United States, suggesting that novel treatment strategies are required to achieve better treatment outcome in PC patients. To achieve this goal, elucidation of underlying mechanism of development and progression of PC is necessary. Although the molecular causes of PC are largely elusive, many studies have demonstrated that multiple critical genes including K-ras, p53, p16, and other key cellular signaling pathways such as PI3K/Akt, mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR), nuclear factor-kappa B (NF-κB), epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), and sonic hedgehog (SHH) plays important roles in the pancreatic tumorigenesis.