Cancer is considered a fetal disease caused by uncontrolled proliferation and progression of abnormal cells. The most efficient cancer therapies suppress tumor growth, prevent progression and metastasis, and are minimally toxic to normal cells. Natural compounds have shown a variety of chemo-protective effects alone or in combination with standard cancer therapies. Along with better understanding of the dynamic interactions between our immune system and cancer development, nutritional immunology—the use of natural compounds as immunomodulators in cancer patients—has begun to emerge. Cancer cells evolve strategies that target many aspects of the immune system to escape or even edit immune surveillance. Therefore, the immunesuppressive tumor microenvironment is a major obstacle in the development of cancer therapies. Because interaction between the tumor microenvironment and the immune system is a complex topic, this review focuses mainly on human clinical trials and animal studies, and it highlights specific immune cells and their cytokines that have been modulated by natural compounds, including carotenoids, curcumin, resveratrol, EGCG, and β-glucans. These natural compounds have shown promising immune-modulating effects, such as inhibiting myeloid-derived suppressor cells and enhancing natural killer and cytolytic T cells, in tumor-bearing animal models, but their efficacy in cancer patients remains to be determined.

To investigate the feasibility of using apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) to assesspathological treatment response in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) following neoadjuvant chemoradiation (nCR). MRI and pathological data collected for 25patients with resectable and borderline resectable PDAC following nCR were retrospectively analyzed. Pre- and post-nCR mean ADC values in the tumors were compared using Wilcoxon matched pairs test. Correlation of pathological treatment response and ADC values was assessed using Pearson's correlation coefficient test and receiver-operating-curve (ROC) analysis. The average mean and standard deviation (SD) of the ADC values for all the patients analyzed were significantly higher in post-nCR (1.667±0.161×10^-3) compared with those prior to nCR (1.395±0.136×10^-3 mm²/sec), (P<0.05). The mean ADC values after nCR were significantly correlated with the pathological responses (r=-0.5172); P=0.02. The area under the curve (AUC) of the ADC values for differentiating G1, G2 and G3 pathological responses, using ROC analysis, was found to be 0.6310 and P=0.03. Changes of pre- and post-treatment ADC values significantly correlated with pathological treatment response for PDAC patients treated with chemoradiation therapy, indicating that the ADC could be used to assesstreatment response for PDAC.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) was the 12th and 11th most common cancer in men and women worldwide in 2012, with the highest incidence in North America and Europe and the lowest in Africa and Asia. Due to the lack of efficient early diagnosi

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the sixth most common and the fourth most deadly cancer worldwide. The development cost of new therapeutics is a major limitation in patient outcomes. Importantly, there is a paucity of preclinical HCC models in which to test new small molecules. Herein, we implemented potentially novel patient-derived organoid (PDO) and patient-derived xenografts (PDX) strategies for high-throughput drug screening. Omacetaxine, an FDA-approved drug for chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML), was found to be a top effective small molecule in HCC PDOs. Next, omacetaxine was tested against a larger cohort of 40 human HCC PDOs. Serial dilution experiments demonstrated that omacetaxine is effective at low (nanomolar) concentrations. Mechanistic studies established that omacetaxine inhibits global protein synthesis, with a disproportionate effect on short–half-life proteins. High-throughput expression screening identified molecular targets for omacetaxine, including key oncogenes, such as PLK1. In conclusion, by using an innovative strategy, we report — for the first time to our knowledge — the effectiveness of omacetaxine in HCC. In addition, we elucidate key mechanisms of omacetaxine action. Finally, we provide a proof-of-principle basis for future studies applying drug screening PDOs sequenced with candidate validation in PDX models. Clinical trials could be considered to evaluate omacetaxine in patients with HCC.

Athena Dong, Chien-Wei Lin, Carla Elena Echeveste, Yi-Wen Huang, Kiyoko Oshima, Martha Yearsley, Xiao Chen, Jianhua Yu, Li-Shu Wang. J Cancer Prev 2022;27:50-7. https://doi.org/10.15430/JCP.2022.27.1.50