miRNA in clinical practice: pancreatic cancer.

To date, pancreatic cancer (PDAC) can't be diagnosed early. Consequently, a majority of patient (80%) display an advanced disease that results in a low resection rate leading to an overall median survival of 4 to 6months. Accordingly, robust markers for the early diagnosis and prognosis of pancreatic cancer, or markers indicative of survival and/or metastatic disease are desperately needed to help alleviate the dismal prognosis of this disease. In this chapter, we review the translational studies demonstrating that miRNAs, alone or in combination, may soon translate into clinical applications as long-awaited screening tools for PDAC.