The Proteoglycan Glypican-1 as a Possible Candidate for Innovative Targeted Therapeutic Strategies for Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) accounts for 90% of all pancreatic cancers, with a 5-year survival rate of 7% and 80% of patients diagnosed with advanced or metastatic malignancies. Despite recent advances in diagnostic testing, surgical techniques, and systemic therapies, there remain limited options for the effective treatment of PDAC. There is an urgent need to develop targeted therapies that are able to differentiate between cancerous and non-cancerous cells to reduce side effects and better inhibit tumor growth. Antibody-targeted strategies are a potentially effective option for introducing innovative therapies. Antibody-based immunotherapies and antibody-conjugated nanoparticle-based targeted therapies with antibodies targeting specific tumor-associated antigens (TAA) can be proposed. In this context, glypican-1 (GPC1), which is highly expressed in PDAC and not expressed or expressed at very low levels in non-malignant lesions and healthy pancreatic tissues, is a useful TAA that can be achieved by a specific antibody-based immunotherapy and antibody-conjugated nanoparticle-based targeted therapy. In this review, we describe the main clinical features of PDAC. We propose the proteoglycan GPC1 as a useful TAA for PDAC-targeted therapies. We also provide a digression on the main developed approaches of antibody-based immunotherapy and antibody-conjugated nanoparticle-based targeted therapy, which can be used to target GPC1.