[Comparison of therapeutic peptides targeting pancreatic cancer].

Despite the small number of cases, pancreatic cancer is one of the biggest challenges in tumor therapy as its treatment is not yet resolved and the expected 5-year survival rate is only 5%. Therefore, innovative solutions for pancreatic cancer are of great importance. Targeted tumor therapy might provide new possibilities in this field. In our research, we focused on finding peptide-based homing molecules and modified their structure to achieve better targeting properties. We compared several peptides that efficiently recognize receptors that are specific for or overexpressed by pancreatic cancer cells. Their structure-effect relationship was determined that can be useful during drug designing in the future. The antitumor effect of Dau=Aoa-GFLG-K(Dau=Aoa) SKAAKN-OH conjugate, which turned out to be the most efficient one during in vitro studies, were analyzed in vivo in female SCID mice. The obtained 30% inhibition, beside the low toxic side effects, might be a good starting point to develop further, more powerful conjugates.