Rho Kinase Inhibition by AT13148 Blocks Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma Invasion and Tumor Growth.

The high mortality of pancreatic cancer demands that new therapeutic avenues be developed. The orally available small-molecule inhibitor AT13148 potently inhibits ROCK1 and ROCK2 kinases that regulate the actomyosin cytoskeleton. We previously reported that ROCK kinase expression increases with human and mouse pancreatic cancer progression and that conditional ROCK activation accelerates mortality in a genetically modified ; (KPC) mouse pancreatic cancer model.