Intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms of the pancreas (IPMNs): new insights on clinical outcomes and malignant progression.

Intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms (IPMNs) are cystic tumors of the pancreas that can progress into invasive carcinomas. Main duct IPMN is usually treated with surgery while branch duct IPMN is surgically resected if it is high risk based on certain features of the tumor (mostly radiographic) that do have some limitations. Predicting the risk of malignant progression has been lately the main focus of research especially that comprehending the molecular pathogenesis of the disease has emerged as a valuable means to better understand the disease and thus guide disease management. We will present two abstracts from the ASCO Annual Meeting. The first compares the clinical outcomes of pancreatic ductal carcinoma and IPMN associated cancer, and the second looks at the pathogenesis of the disease at the cellular and molecular levels to predict high risk disease.