Pancreatic cancer is now becoming a common cause of cancer death with no significant change in patient survival over the last 10 years. The main treatment options for pancreatic cancer patients are surgery, radiation therapy and chemotherapy, but there is now considerable effort to develop new and effective treatments. In recent years, CRISPR/Cas9 technology has emerged as a powerful gene editing tool with promise, not only as an important research methodology, but also as a new and effective method for targeted therapy. In this review, we summarize current advances in CRISPR/Cas9 technology and its application to pancreatic cancer research, and importantly as a means of selectively targeting key drivers of pancreatic cancer.
Keywords: CRISPR/Cas9; gene editing; knock out and knock in; library screening; pancreatic cancer.
Copyright © 2019 Yang, Bailey and Pilarsky.