Importance of the field: Pancreatic cancer is a devastating disease associated with near uniform mortality. Usually diagnosed at advanced, metastatic stages when surgical resection with curative intention is not possible any more, most patients succumb to progressive disease after a few months. Despite recent advances in understanding pancreatic carcinogenesis and continuous efforts in translational research, so far these results failed to translate into clinically relevant improvements of patient survival.
Areas covered in this review: Preclinical evaluation of drug candidates and novel therapeutic strategies rely on in vitro and in vivo model systems to predict response in patients. This article reviews mouse models of pancreatic cancer, their respective applications in translational research and discusses their potential to predict clinical responses in patients.
What the reader will gain: This article provides a profound overview of individual strength as well as of shortcomings of mouse models of pancreatic cancer currently available for translational research.
Take home message: Considerable progress in designing mouse models of pancreatic cancer has been made over the last decade and several xenograft as well as genetically engineered mouse models faithfully recapitulating human disease development has been developed. Taken together, these newly developed in vivo model systems provide powerful tools likely to boost preclinical evaluation and bench-to-bedside transition of novel therapeutic approaches directed against this dire malady.