A catastrophic hypothesis for pancreas cancer progression

Exocrine pancreas cancer has a dismal prognosis. The precise reasons accounting for its biological and clinical behavior are not known. A catastrophe takes place in the course of pancreas cancer development/progression so that, once it occurs, the evolution of the tumor is very rapid, leading to local invasion and metastasis. Up to now, such behavior cannot be conclusively ascribe to a single molecular event. If correct, this hypothesis as important implications regarding pancreas cancer research. Further work is warranted to examine this hypothesis and to identify the putative catastrophic elements participating in this tumor.