Felix Rückert

Universität Heidelberg · Surgical Clinic of Mannheim

Introduction: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is an aggressive tumor; treatment remains a challenge because of the lack of effective therapeutic strategies. Basic research in this field is dependent on the availability of model systems. New pancreatic cancer cell lines are therefore important for the study of its biology. In the present study, we...

Although postpancreatectomy hemorrhage (PPH) is observed infrequently after pancreatic surgery, it remains a serious complication with a high rate of mortality. Recently, the International Study Group of Pancreatic Surgery (ISGPS) issued a new definition for PPH. To evaluate and validate this new definition, we analyzed data retrospectively from ou...

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most highly lethal of all solid malignancies for which serological biomarkers to aid in the detection and clinical management of patients are urgently needed. To date, the lack of a single highly specific and sensitive marker for pancreatic cancer detection has led to a growing consensus in the field towards the deve...

Pancreaticoduodenectomy (PD) is the most frequently performed resectional procedure in chronic pancreatitis. Only a few studies have evaluated quality of life (QOL) after PD for chronic pancreatitis. This retrospective study examined long-term quality of life and relief of symptoms in a homogenous consecutive cohort of 67 patients undergoing PD for...

Pancreatic cancer is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths, for which serological biomarkers are urgently needed. Most discovery-phase studies focus on the use of one biological source for analysis. The present study details the combined mining of pancreatic cancer-related cell line conditioned media and pancreatic juice for identifica...

This review provides an overview of the molecular mechanisms and pathways known to enhance development and progression of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Today, the concept that progression of epithelial precursor lesions leads to invasive PDAC as a result of accumulating mutation in K-ras, p16(INK4A), p53 and Smad4 is widely accepted. Mul...

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is an aggressive tumor; treatment remains a challenge because of the lack of effective therapeutic strategies. Basic research in this field is dependent on the availability of model systems. New pancreatic cancer cell lines are therefore important for the study of its biology. In the present study, we report the est...

To investigate biological differences and prognostic indicators of different ampullary cancer (AC) subtypes. AC is associated with a favorable prognosis compared with other periampullary carcinomas. Aside from other prognostic factors, the histological origin of AC may determine survival. Specifically, the pancreatobiliary subtype of AC displays wo...

Although mortality after pancreatoduodenectomy for chronic pancreatitis has declined, the complication rate remains high. Today, there is an increasing need to base clinical decisions on the available scientific evidence to provide the best available treatment for the patients. Therefore, we retrospectively analyzed comprehensive preoperative and p...

Pancreatic heterotopia (PH) is a common congenital anomaly and can occur anywhere in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT). In most cases, these heterotopias are asymptomatic and are only incidentally detected upon pathohistological examination or autopsy. We analyzed our cases of duodenal PH with respect to their clinical relevance and impact. Our pros...

The RET protooncogene plays a crucial role in neural crest development; accordingly, mutations of RET cause MEN2A and familial medullary thyroid carcinoma, while the expression deregulation of RET is involved in the pathophysiology of glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) and pancreatic cancer (PDAC). The aim of this study was to evaluate if germline varia...

Pancreatic cancer is still a devastating malignancy with a 5 year survival of only 5%. Over the last 25 years treatment success has remained largely unchanged demonstrating the resistance of pancreatic cancer to conventional radiation and chemotherapy. Therefore, novel therapies target the molecular aberrations occurring in proliferation, metastasi...

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most malignant forms of cancer. Due to numerous defects of the apoptosis machinery this tumor shows a high resistance towards conventional oncological therapies. On the level of the extrinsic pathway, signal transduction is flawed by over-expression of decoy receptors but also by a dysfunctional death inducing signal...

Data from our comprehensive literature search for the role of apoptosis-associated genes in pancreatic cancer. The table displays all genes, which were considered in our study. Please note that for most of the studies on the level of DNA, which means mutational studies, no quantitative statement concerning expression was made. Included were studies...

Characteristics of our protein interaction prediction (A). Examples of structural models of three possible new interactions in the cell death pathway (more than 30% sequence and interface identity). The structural alignment between template and interacting protein structures is <2 Angstrom. 1 = Arts-Apollon; 2 = p16-ERK; 3 = p16-JNK (B). (2.16 MB P...

Protein interactions from our database search and our interaction prediction analysis. Sheet one shows already known interactions from our database search. Sheet two shows putative interactions, proposed by our interaction prediction model. (0.09 MB XLS)

Background: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) remains an important cause of cancer death. Changes in apoptosis signaling in pancreatic cancer result in chemotherapy resistance and aggressive growth and metastasizing. The aim of this study was to characterize the apoptosis pathway in pancreatic cancer computationally by evaluation of experime...

In AsPC-1 cells Bcl-2 expression was not detectable in different passages of the cells using western blot (A). We determined the optimal time point for harvesting by activation of caspase 3 and 7. The groups displayed a similar kinetic response to transfection. The dynamic measurement was conducted every 12 hours after transfection. All Caspase ass...

Expression of STAT1 (A) and Interferon-beta (B) in transfected cells. AsPC1 cells are depicted in white, MiaPaCa-2 cells are in grey. All samples were normalized to β-Actin as house keeping gene.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma shows a distinct apoptosis resistance, which contributes significantly to the aggressive nature of this tumor and constrains the effectiveness of new therapeutic strategies. Apoptosis resistance is determined by the net balance of the cells pro-and anti-apoptotic "control mechanisms". Numerous dysregulated anti-apop...

Das duktale Pankreaskarzinom (pankreatisches duktales Adenokarzinom, PDAC) ist das häufigste Malignom des Pankreas. Jedes Jahr erkranken in Deutschland ca. 6050 Menschen an dieser Krankheit. Die chirurgische Resektion gilt heute als der einzige Therapieansatz mit kurativer Intention. Die konventionellen onkologischen Therapieschemata wie Radiothera...

The low prevalence of pancreatic cancer remains an obstacle to the development of effective screening tools in an asymptomatic population. However, development of effective serologic markers still offers the potential for improvement of diagnostic capabilities, especially for subpopulations of patients with high risk for pancreatic cancer. The accu...

Palliative procedures play an important role in the treatment of malignancies of the pancreatic head/distal biliary tree, as only 20-30% can be cured by surgical resection. We sought to determine if surgical or non-surgical management was the most appropriate therapy for the treatment of obstructive jaundice in the palliative setting. High volume c...

Pancreatic cancer is a disease with high resistance to most common therapies and therefore has a poor prognosis, which is partly due to a lack of reaction to apoptotic stimuli. Signal transduction of such stimuli includes a death receptor-mediated extrinsic pathway as well as an intrinsic pathway linked to the mitochondria. Defects in apoptotic pat...

Lysyl oxidase-like 2 (LOXL2) plays a part in epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) by stabilizing the transcription factor SNAI1. Previous studies showed that LOXL2 is one of the most highly and specifically upregulated genes in pancreatic cancer. LOXL2 was also found to be strongly upregulated in the secretome of established pancreatic cancer ce...

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) is among the most lethal human cancers in part because it is insensitive to many chemotherapeutic drugs. Studying a mouse model of PDA that is refractory to the clinically used drug gemcitabine, we found that the tumors in this model were poorly perfused and poorly vascularized, properties that are shared with...

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the eighth most common cancer with the lowest overall 5-y relative survival rate. Gene expression profiling of PDAC revealed an overexpression of the macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF), a lymphokine involved in cell-mediated immunity and inflammation, as well as in the regulation of cellular sign...

Pancreatic cancer is an exceptionally devastating and incurable disease, the treatment of which has largely been unsuccessful due to the higher resistance of pancreatic tumor cells to oncologic treatment. PDAC cells have accumulated different molecular mechanisms, which enable survival against cytotoxic therapies. Defects of the apoptosis pathway p...

Patients suffering from locally advanced esophageal carcinoma are generally treated using multimodal therapies. This prospective, non-randomized trial was performed to evaluate the survival benefit of neoadjuvant radiochemotherapy prior to surgery in comparison with surgery only. Histopathological outcomes and survival were compared between 61 pati...

Background Acinar cell carcinoma (ACC) represents only 1–2% of pancreatic cancers and is a very rare malignancy. At the time of diagnosis only 50% of the tumors appear to be resectable. Reliable data for an effective adjuvant or neoadjuvant treatment are not available. Case presentation A 65-year old male presented with obstructive jaundice and no...

Kallikreins play an important role in tumour microenvironment and as cancer biomarkers in different cancer entities. Previous studies suggested an upregulation of KLK10 and KLK6 in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). Therefore, we evaluated the clinicopathological role of these kallikreins and their value as biomarkers in PDAC. Differential ex...

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is characterized by an abundant desmoplastic stroma. Interactions between cancer and stromal cells play a critical role in tumour invasion, metastasis and chemoresistance. Therefore, we hypothesized that gene expression profile of the stromal components of pancreatic carcinoma is different from chronic pancre...

To explore the role of the adaptor molecule in liver regeneration after partial hepatectomy (PH). We used transgenic mice expressing an N-terminal truncated form of MORT1/FADD under the control of the albumin promoter. As previously shown, this transgenic protein abrogated CD95- and CD120a-mediated apoptosis in the liver. Cyclin A expression was de...

Derangement of the apoptotic program is considered an important cause of liver disease. It became clear that receptor-mediated apoptosis is of specific interest in this context, and CD95 and CD120a, both members of the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) receptor superfamily, are the most prominent cell death receptors involved. The death signal is induced...