Comment on “Theranostic lipid nanocarriers for precision diagnosis and targeted therapy in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma”

Abstract

This letter comments on a recent review of theranostic lipid nanocarriers for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, identifying three areas of concern in the evidence base. First, the 211-item reference list contains multiple duplicated citations listed under separate numbers with identical content (for example, refs. 6/8, 9/21, 55/89, 106/117, 132/143), a recurring pattern suggesting that the bibliography was not fully verified before submission. Second, Table 6 cites reference markers “[639]” and “[640]” for the NanoSMART and NBTXR3 trials, numbers that exceed the 211-entry reference list and appear to be residual artifacts from a source document with a different numbering scheme. Third, the review reports that NC-6004 (a micellar cisplatin formulation) has completed a phase III trial in combination with gemcitabine but omits the trial’s outcome, despite the review’s broader argument for the translational viability of lipid- and micelle-based nanocarriers and its extended discussion of nab-paclitaxel as a successful precedent. Reporting this outcome, favorable or not, alongside existing precedents, would allow readers to weigh the review’s central claim against the complete record of late-stage clinical testing. While the review offers a valuable catalogue of nanocarrier platforms and regulatory precedents, these issues warrant correction before the citation base is treated as fully reliable.

Dear Editor,

We read with great interest the review by Nagdev et al. (2026), on theranostic lipid nanocarriers for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

Duplicated references cited under different numbers throughout

Several sources in the 211-item reference list appeared more than once under separate numbers with identical content. References 6 and 8 both cite “Waddell N, Pajic M, Patch A-M, et al., Whole genomes redefine the mutational landscape of pancreatic cancer, Nature 2015.” References 9 and 21 both cite the identical Hu J-X review on pancreatic cancer epidemiology. References 55 and 89 both cite the identical Yu X-targeted drug delivery review, and references 106 and 117 both cite the identical Ahmad G DHA-SBT-1214 study. References 132 and 143 likewise cite the identical Pontón and Sánchez-García review of nanocarriers for combination therapy in PDAC. This pattern recurs across the reference list rather than appearing as an isolated typographical slip, which is the kind of error a reference-management step should catch before the submission (Cepeda Vásquez and Cepeda Vásquez 2025). For a manuscript of this length and citation density, duplication under separate numbers suggests that the reference list was assembled without a final verification pass, and it raises a broader question about how carefully the remaining 200-plus citations were checked against the claims they are meant to support, since a reader has no independent way to confirm that each attribution is accurate without tracing every source individually (Kayaalp et al. 2026).

Reference numbers in Table 6 that do not exist in the bibliography

This study lists two trials, NanoSMART and NBTXR3, with citation markers written as “NCT04789486 [639]” and “NCT04484909 [640]” along with the standard reference numbers 209 and 210. The reference list, however, contains only 211 numbered entries; therefore, the bracketed numbers 639 and 640 correspond to nothing in the bibliography as submitted (Kumar et al. 2026). This is consistent with the content having been carried over from a source document with a different, larger numbering scheme and not being fully reconciled with this manuscript’s reference list during compilation. While this particular artifact is unlikely to mislead a reader about the clinical trials themselves, given that the correct NCT identifiers are also provided, it is a visible marker of the same compilation carelessness evident in the duplicated citations elsewhere, and it belongs to the class of errors that peer review and editorial proofing exist specifically to catch before a manuscript reaches the readers (Nydahl et al. 2025).

Completed phase III trial outcome omitted from the evidence summary

Table 6 lists NC-6004, a micellar cisplatin formulation, as having reached a completed phase III trial (NCT02043288) in combination with gemcitabine, but reports only the trial’s phase and status, not its results. For a review whose central argument is that lipid- and micelle-based nanocarriers represent a translationally viable strategy for pancreatic cancer, the outcome of the one completed phase III trial listed in the entire evidence table is directly relevant to that argument, and its omission leaves a reader unable to judge whether this specific late-stage nanomedicine platform succeeded or failed to improve the standard therapy (Jang et al. 2026). The surrounding text in Sects.  7 and 8 places considerable weight on translational promise and cites nab-paclitaxel’s approval as a precedent for the successful clinical translation of lipid- and protein-based carriers, treating that single positive case as representative of the field’s trajectory (Saini et al. 2026). A symmetric account would also plainly state what happened when a comparable platform reached the same late-stage testing. This review serves as a benchmark for clinical success, as a reader assessing whether nanocarrier strategies for pancreatic cancer are broadly promising or narrowly successful in one or two specific formulations requires both outcomes, not only the favorable one, to form that judgment (Vázquez-Salgado et al. 2025). Reporting a negative or non-superior result alongside the positive precedent would not undermine the review’s broader mechanistic case, but omitting it while devoting an extended discussion to regulatory and patent precedent for approval creates an asymmetry between how thoroughly favorable and unfavorable evidence is documented (Fernandez Lynch et al. 2026).

Taken together, this review compiles an extensive and genuinely useful catalogue of lipid-based nanocarrier platforms, targeting strategies, and regulatory precedents relevant to pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (Hidig et al. 2025). The patent and regulatory sections, in particular, gather information that is not easily found consolidated elsewhere. Nevertheless, before the extensive citation base is treated as fully reliable, the duplicated references need to be corrected and the full bibliography reconciled against every in-text citation, the stray reference numbers in Table 6 need to be resolved, and the completed phase III outcome for NC-6004 needs to be reported so that the review’s central claim about nanocarrier translatability can be weighed against the full record of late-stage clinical testing rather than against successful precedents.

Author contributions

K.A.K. contributed to conceptualization, literature review, critical analysis, manuscript drafting, correspondence, and final approval. S.B. contributed to literature review, critical revision of the manuscript, interpretation of findings, and final approval. A.J.J. contributed to manuscript editing, methodological review, critical revision, and final approval. All authors reviewed and approved the final version of the manuscript.

Funding

None

Data availability

No datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.

Declarations

Competing interest

The authors declare no competing interest.

Ethical approval

Not applicable (Commentary on a previously published article).

Informed consent

Not applicable.