Preface for focused issue: science on pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer (PC) is the deadliest cancer. Despite recent progress on understanding the biology of PC, there are very limited treatment options for this aggressive cancer. The 5-year overall survival rate is less than 8%. The past few decades have seen an increase of PC-associated deaths. It is estimated that PC will be the second leading cause of cancer-related death by 2030 in the United States. Among all the options for PC, surgery remains to be the most effective treatment. However, less than 20% of PC patients are eligible for surgery, most patients had lost the opportunity for surgery as they presented with advanced stages at the time of diagnosis. For those patients with advanced PC, unfortunately, there is little, if any treatment was made available in the past few decades. In this special issue, we have eight expert review articles that cover cancer biology, tumor microenvironment and surgical resection of PC. This special issue aims to address the most recent research progress that have been made on understanding the initiation and progression of this deadly disease, in hopes of bridging the gap between basic science advances and clinical practice in PC.