Pancreatic Juice Biomarker for Pancreatic Cancer

描述（申请人提供）：胰腺癌是一种非常难以诊断和治疗的高致死率疾病。胰腺癌的有效治疗主要依赖于疾病的早期诊断。由于目前诊断早期胰腺癌的方法是无效的，因此迫切需要新的生物标志物。这些生物标志物对于患胰腺癌风险增加的患者以及由于慢性胰腺炎或囊性病变而导致胰腺异常的患者尤其有用。由于肿瘤进展的不确定性，这种病变很难处理。胰液是近端体液，是鉴别胰腺癌生物标志物的合适标本。癌细胞优先进入导管管腔，使果汁成为癌症相关标志物的丰富来源。在过去的几年里，大量的胰腺癌候选生物标志物已经被蛋白质组学和其他技术鉴定出来。这些候选生物标志物的验证是缩小实验室研究与临床应用之间差距的重要一步，也是胰腺癌诊断生物标志物开发的主要瓶颈。在拟议的研究中，我们计划对一组选定的胰腺癌生物标志物候选物进行表征，以确定它们在胰腺液中用于胰腺癌检测的性能。我们的患者队列将包括癌症患者和早期癌症前期患者，以及患有囊性病变和胰腺炎的对照患者。生物标志物开发的补充方法将结合最先进的免疫分析和靶向蛋白质组学分析。这些试验将用于评估临床胰液标本中的候选蛋白。从这项研究中开发的生物标志物可用于帮助评估接受内窥镜手术的高危患者。这些生物标志物也有可能进一步发展为早期检测胰腺癌的血液检测。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Pancreatic cancer is a highly lethal disease that is very difficult to diagnose and treat. The effective treatment of pancreatic cancer is critically relying on the diagnosis of the disease at an early stage. Because the current methods for diagnosing very early pancreatic cancer are ineffective, there is an urgent need for new biomarkers. These biomarkers would be particularly useful in patients who are at increased risk of developing pancreatic cancer and who have an abnormal pancreas because of chronic pancreatitis or cystic lesions. Such lesions can be difficult to manage because of the uncertainty regarding neoplastic progression. Pancreatic juice is a proximal body fluid and represents an opportune specimen for identifying biomarkers of pancreatic cancer. Cancer cells are preferentially shed into the ductal lumen, making juice a rich source of cancer associated markers. In the past few years, a large number of pancreatic cancer biomarker candidates have been identified by proteomics and other techniques. Validation of these biomarker candidates is an important step to close the gap between bench research and clinical application, and has been the major bottleneck for biomarker development for pancreatic cancer diagnosis. In the proposed study, we plan to characterize a selected group of pancreatic cancer biomarker candidates for their performance in pancreatic juice for pancreatic cancer detection. Our patient cohort will include those with cancer and the early stages of pre-cancer versus diseased controls with cystic lesions and pancreatitis. A complementary approach of biomarker development will combine state-of-the-art immunoassays and targeted proteomic assays. These assays will be applied to evaluate the protein candidates in clinical pancreatic juice specimens. Biomarkers developed from this study could be used to aide in assessment of high-risk patients undergoing endoscopic procedures. It is also possible that these biomarkers could be further developed into blood based test for early detection of pancreatic cancer.