Investigation of an anticancer activity of combination of interferon-alpha and gemcitabine on pancreatic cancer cells.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is still a clinical challenge due to its deteriorated prognosis. Therefore, new combination chemotherapeutic approaches are of research interest. In this work, we attempted to characterize the effects of gemcitabine and interferon-alpha as well as the combination of both on the metabolic, pro-apoptotic, and proliferative activity of MiaPaca and Panc-1 cells. We showed that the exposure of both drugs in combination increases effectively the metabolic activity of cells of MiaPaca and Panc-1 cell lines compared to the monotherapies. Based on the data from the analysis of apoptosis, the underlying molecular effect of metabolic and proliferative inhibition is an increase in the number of cells in the early apoptosis. These data can be of interest in the context of future preclinical research.