Abstract
Advanced and metastatic endometrial cancer (EC) is associated with a poor prognosis, despite the availability of systemic treatments including endocrine therapy and combination cytotoxic chemotherapy. Response rates of systemic treatments are associated with high toxicity, have poor response rates and responses are genenrally short-lived. Recent findings on the molecular aberrations of the subtypes of EC have enabled in vitro and in vivo studies to exploit targeted treatment for this disease. One of the most common molecular aberrations in EC is the PI3K–AKT–mTOR pathway being activated through different mechanisms in both type I and type II ECs. The aim of this review is to summarize the numerous preclinical and clinical studies, and discuss the future directions.
Financial & competing interests disclosure
D Church is funded by a research grant from the Oxford Cancer Research Centre. R Koppensteiner and KJ Dedes are funded in part by a grant from the Julius Müller Stiftung. TA Yap is recipient of the 2011 Scott Minerd Prostate Cancer Foundation Young Investigator Award. The authors have no other relevant affiliations or financial involvement with any organization or entity with a financial interest in or financial conflict with the subject matter or materials discussed in the manuscript apart from those disclosed.
No writing assistance was utilized in the production of this manuscript.