Advances in research on therapeutic strategies of targeting pancreatic cancer stroma

Pancreatic cancer stroma plays a critical role in tumor progression, invasion, metastasis and resistance.Targeting tumor cell alone could not meet the demand for prolonging patients'' survival.Growing studies have laid emphasis on developing combined regimens between targeting pancreatic cancer stroma and chemotherapy, radiotherapy and immunotherapy.We are faced with some new opportunities in spite of the great challenges brought to the research and development of targeting drugs owing to the complicated stroma components, crosstalking signal pathways and abnormal angiogenesis of pancreatic cancer.In this article, recent advances in therapeutic strategies of targeting pancreatic cancer stroma are reviewed and analyzed from the aspects of extracellular matrix (ECM), cancer associated fibroblasts (CAFs) and vessels, in the hope of providing some novel ideas for targeting therapy against pancreatic cancer.