Establishment of early diagnosis system of pancreatobiliary carcinomas by the application of mucin expression profiles

胰腺导管腺癌的早期发现和不同类型的导管内乳头状黏液性肿瘤的准确鉴别诊断是非常困难的。MUC1、MUC2和MUC4的表达谱在PDAC和IPMN之间是不同的。我们建立了一种甲基化特异性电泳（MSE）方法来分析DNA甲基化状态，并应用此方法对45例患者的胰液进行了检测。MSE预测诊断PDAC的敏感性和特异性分别为80%和87%，腹膜型IPMN的敏感性和特异性分别为88%和100%，胃型IPMN的敏感性和特异性分别为77%和88%。胰液的MSE分析可为胰腺肿瘤的诊断提供有用的信息。另一项研究首次证明MUC1通过调节PDAC细胞中的多种促血管生成因子在控制缺氧驱动的血管生成中发挥关键作用。

It is very difficult to perform an early detection of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas (PDACs) or an accurate differential diagnosis for subtypes of intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasms (IPMNs) with different outcome. Expression profiles of MUC1, MUC2 and MUC4 are different between PDACs and IPMNs. We developed a methylation-specific electrophoresis (MSE) method to analyze the DNA methylation status.By using the MSE, we evaluated pancreatic juices from 45 patients. The predictive diagnosis by MSE showed sensitivity and specificity of 80% and 87% for PDAC; 88% and 100% for intestinal-type IPMN; and 77% and 88% for gastric-type IPMN; respectively. The MSE analysis of pancreatic juices may give us useful informations for diagnosis of human pancreatic neoplasms. Another study for the first time demonstrated a pivotal role of MUC1 in controlling the hypoxia-driven angiogenesis through the regulation of multiple proangiogenic factors in PDAC cells.