• hyperthermia
• radiotherapy
• pancreatic cancer
• CAM tumor models

The most prominent approaches for the treatment of carcinomas are radiotherapy, chemotherapy and surgery. On the other hand, despite the encouraging efficiency of these strategies and the last scientific improvements, cancer therapy remains a challenge.
In this context, the establishment of integrated treatments combined with emergent approaches would be a game changer for the cancer management.
Among the several emergent approaches, whole-body hyperthermia is one of the most promising, especially in combination with chemo and/or radiotherapy, even if its efficacy has produced heterogeneous results in preclinical and clinical settings for different types of tumours.
The aim of this thesis is to evaluate on pancreatic carcinoma whether adding hyperthermia to a well-established treatment, such as Radiotherapy, allows to increase the overall therapeutic effect by avoiding the mechanisms of radio-resistance. In this regard, the potential additive effect of the combination between radiotherapy and hyperthermia has been comprehensively evaluated in alternative in vivo models developed on chick embryo chorioallantoic membranes (CAMs) of pancreatic carcinoma.