ИСТИНА

Pancreatic cancer (PC) is one of the most aggressive types of malignant tumors due to the fact, that early stages of the disease are asymptomatic and difficult to diagnose. Matrix metalloproteinases (MMP) play a key role in progression of early PC stages through proteolysis of collagen and a range of regulators that promotes tumor invasion and angiogenesis. MMPs are considered as promising therapeutic targets, but MMP inhibitors exhibit significant efficacy exclusively in a narrow time window, that makes it difficult to use them for prevention of local relapses. That is why MMP inhibitors and blocking antibodies demonstrated moderate results in clinical trials – progressive tumor stages could not be effectively treated with these agents, while their use in the early stages still looks very promising. The aim of the present work was to study the effects of long­term and preventive suppression of the activity of MT1­MMP (a key initiator of tumor proliferation and invasion) in pancreatic cancer using the approach of active immunization.