Why do we need a journal solely focused on the malignant diseases of the pancreas?

Pancreatic cancer has become the third leading cause of death from malignant diseases in both the United States and Europe. The incidence of pancreatic cancer is rising. Tremendous efforts have been devoted to basic and clinical research in pancreatic cancer. However, the outcome of pancreatic cancer has been minimally improved over the last thirty years. Such a profound sadness tells us that we should spend more efforts and be more focused on this disease. There had been no scientific journal that is solely focused on the malignant diseases of the pancreas. It is critical to have a media to rapidly disseminate research news and reports within the communities of pancreatic cancer researchers and have a venue to discuss the management strategies for pancreatic cancer among clinicians. This is why we are launching Annals of Pancreatic Cancer.

In the past decades, we recognize that we must manage the care for pancreatic cancer in a multidisciplinary manner because we have very limited options for pancreatic cancer patients in each individual clinical specialty. Even for those resectable pancreatic cancer, the five-year survival following the surgical resection is only around 20%. We thus recognize that none of pancreatic cancer patients have been truly diagnosed at early stage. One of the keys for curing pancreatic cancer is to diagnose it truly at an early stage or diagnose it at its premalignant stage which is known to be truly curable. We also recognize that targeting neoplastic cells of pancreatic cancer is often not successful because common genetic alterations in pancreatic cancer are not actionable. The stroma of pancreatic cancer has drawn a significant attention, which has shifted the paradigm of therapeutic development for pancreatic cancer. Nevertheless, the complexity of the tumor microenvironment of pancreatic cancer has often led to many controversial research findings, suggesting that we need to create no barrier but a more rapid venue for the publication of these controversial findings. We should make the communities of research and development fully aware of the complexity of pancreatic cancer and therefore will not make the same detours in the development of new therapeutics for this challenging diseases.

We will make this journal for all researchers in the field of pancreatic cancer and for all health care providers who manage the care of pancreatic cancer patients. The journal will cover topics from all aspects of pancreatic cancer including basic biology and immunology, epidemiology, prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and supportive care. We will use this journal to bring together all scientists and clinicians under the same ceiling to discuss how we can better understand and treat pancreatic cancer. The main goal of the journal is to make our clinicians incorporate the knowledge from basic science research into their routine management and clinical investigation of pancreatic cancer and also to inspire our scientists to have the translational intuitiveness in their epidemiology and laboratory researches.

Acknowledgments

Funding: None.

Footnote

Provenance and Peer Review: This article was commissioned by the editorial office, Annals of Pancreatic Cancer. The article did not undergo external peer review.

Conflicts of Interest: The author has completed the ICMJE uniform disclosure form (available at http://dx.doi.org/10.21037/ apc.2016.12.01). Lei Zheng serves as the unpaid Editor-in-Chief of Annals of Pancreatic Cancer. Lei Zheng reports grants from Merck, during the conduct of the study; grants from iTeos, grants from Bristol-Meyer Squibb, grants from Merck, grants from Astrazeneca, grants from Amgen, grants from NovaRock, grants from Inxmed, grants from Halozyme, personal fees from Biosion, personal fees and other from Alphamab, personal fees from NovaRock, personal fees from Akrevia/ Xilio, personal fees from Datarevive, personal fees from QED, personal fees from Natera, personal fees and other from Mingruizhiyao, outside the submitted work.

Ethical Statement: The author is accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

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