{"entity":{"id":"paper-bear-pancreatic-immunotherapy-review-cancer-cell-2020","kind":"paper","name":"Challenges and opportunities for pancreatic cancer immunotherapy","aka":[],"tldr":"A review of why immune drugs fail in pancreatic cancer: the tumour's own driver genes build immune suppression from the start, single agents do nothing, and the proposed answer is to combine antigen delivery, T-cell support and stromal reprogramming.","summary":"Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is among the most immune-resistant tumour types; its genomic landscape shaped by oncogenic drivers promotes immune suppression from the earliest stages of tumour inception and subverts adaptive T-cell immunity. Single-agent immune modulators have been clinically ineffective and multi-modal therapies targeting mechanisms of resistance are likely needed. The review covers strategies to confer antigen specificity, enhance T-cell effector function and neutralise immunosuppressive elements of the tumour microenvironment.","asOf":"2026-09-24","links":[{"label":"Bear, Vonderheide and O'Hara, Cancer Cell 2020: challenges and opportunities for pancreatic cancer immunotherapy","url":"https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ccell.2020.08.004"},{"label":"PubMed","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32946773/"}],"tags":[],"related":[],"cancers":["pancreatic"],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":["penn-abramson"],"pathways":["pd1-checkpoint","cancer-immunity-cycle","immune-desert-exclusion"],"terms":["cold-vs-hot","immune-exclusion"],"trials":[],"people":["robert-vonderheide"],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":["cancer-cell"],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"journal":"Cancer Cell","year":2020,"doi":"10.1016/j.ccell.2020.08.004","pmid":"32946773","authors":"Bear AS, Vonderheide RH, O'Hara MH.","paperType":"review","findings":["Immune suppression in pancreatic cancer is driven by the oncogenic drivers from tumour inception.","Single-agent immune modulators are ineffective; three-part combinations are proposed."],"whatItMeans":"The clearest statement of why the corpus records so many negative immunotherapy trials here, and of the design logic behind the vaccine and agonist combinations now in trials.","caveats":["Narrative review, not a systematic analysis.","Predates the current vaccine readouts."],"changedPractice":false},"route":"/key-papers/paper-bear-pancreatic-immunotherapy-review-cancer-cell-2020/","neighbours":{"cancer":[{"id":"pancreatic","kind":"cancer","name":"Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma","route":"/cancers/pancreatic/"}],"institution":[{"id":"penn-abramson","kind":"institution","name":"Abramson Cancer Center, University of Pennsylvania","route":"/institutions/penn-abramson/"}],"pathway":[{"id":"immune-desert-exclusion","kind":"pathway","name":"Cold tumours: immune deserts and exclusion","route":"/pathways/immune-desert-exclusion/"},{"id":"pd1-checkpoint","kind":"pathway","name":"PD-1 / PD-L1 immune checkpoint & T-cell activation","route":"/pathways/pd1-checkpoint/"},{"id":"cancer-immunity-cycle","kind":"pathway","name":"The cancer-immunity cycle","route":"/pathways/cancer-immunity-cycle/"}],"term":[{"id":"cold-vs-hot","kind":"term","name":"Hot vs cold tumours","route":"/terms/cold-vs-hot/"},{"id":"immune-exclusion","kind":"term","name":"Immune exclusion","route":"/terms/immune-exclusion/"}],"person":[{"id":"robert-vonderheide","kind":"person","name":"Robert H. Vonderheide","route":"/people/robert-vonderheide/"}],"journal":[{"id":"cancer-cell","kind":"journal","name":"Cancer Cell","route":"/journals/cancer-cell/"}]}}