Enhanced antitumor effect via combination of triptolide with 5-fluorouracil in pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer is a type of malignant tumor with poor prognosis. Only about 15% to 20% of the patients were able to accept surgical treatment and the 5-year survival rate is less than 1% (1). In order to improve the therapeutic effect, a variety of chemotherapeutic drugs and molecular targeted drugs were used to treat patients with advanced pancreatic cancer (2). Combined therapy can not only reduce the toxicity of chemotherapy drugs to the body but also enhance the sensitivity of tumor cells to drugs. How to enhance the effect of chemotherapy and prevent tumor recurrence and metastasis becomes an urgent research question. Although gemcitabine is the first line chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer, the treatment effect is not satisfactory due to the drug resistance of pancreatic cancer (3). For patients who fail to gemcitabine chemotherapy, the selective use of second-line chemotherapy such as 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) may also be effective (4)