Author(s)

Yunpeng Pan, Kangping Song, Hanchuan Xu

Corresponding Author

Yunpeng Pan

ABSTRACT

Proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs) is a newly developed protein-knockout strategy, which degrades target protein by ubiquitination and ligation. It has shown a promising effect in both cancer and immunotherapy. Pancreatic cancer is one of the most progressive cancers. Current therapies for it include surgery and radiation therapy, but both have low survival rates, as illustrated in this paper. Compared to traditional therapies for pancreatic cancer, PROTAC has the benefit of minor side effects and negligible drug resistance. In recent years, breakthroughs in pancreatic cancer are accomplished through PROTAC. In this paper, the mechanism of PROTAC is summarized in full detail, current targets of PROTAC are analyzed and the potential directions of future research are given. Targets specifically for pancreatic cancers, such as Napabucasin, a STAT3 inhibitor, with napabucasin-based PROTAC, the mechanism of napabucasin are under exploration and their progress is shared in this article. Moreover, BDR4 and CREPT, which are common targets in many different cancers, are also included for their outstanding performance in PROTACs’ drug delivery.

KEYWORDS

PROTACs, Pancreatic cancer, Napabucasin-based PROTAC XD2-149, BRD4, CREPT