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Elsevier, Drug Discovery Today, 4(19), p. 458-468, 2014

DOI: 10.1016/j.drudis.2013.10.015

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Neuroendocrine tumors: Insights into innovative therapeutic options and rational development of targeted therapies

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This paper is available in a repository.

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Abstract

Neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) are heterogeneous neoplasms with respect to molecular characteristics and clinical outcome. Although slow-growing, NETs are often identified late, already showing invasion of adjacent tissues and metastases at diagnosis. Precise knowledge of NET biological and molecular features has opened the door to the identification of novel pharmacological targets. Therapeutic options include somatostatin analogs, alone or in combination with interferon-α, multi-targeted tyrosine kinase inhibitors (e.g. sunitinib) or mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) inhibitors (e.g. everolimus). Antiangiogenic approaches and anti insulin-like growth factor receptor (IGFR) compounds have been also proposed as combination therapies with the aforementioned compounds. This review will focus on recent studies that have improved therapeutic strategies in NETs, discussing management challenges such as drug resistance development as well as focusing on the need for predictive biomarkers to design distinct drug combinations and optimize pharmacological control.