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Updated: Oct 4, 2025
Isolation of Proximal Fluids to Investigate the Tumor Microenvironment of Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma
Published on: November 5, 2020
Potential Metabolite Biomarkers for Early Detection of Stage-I Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma
Yingying Cao1, Rui Zhao1, Kai Guo1
1Department of Radiology, Affiliated Hospital of Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing, China.
Background & Objectives:
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma remains an extremely malignant tumor having a poor prognosis. The 5-year survival rate of PDAC is related to its stage (about 80% for stage I vs 20% for other stages). However, detection of PDAC in an early stage is difficult due to the lack of effective screening methods. In this study, we aimed to construct a novel metabolic model for stage-I PDAC detection, using both serum and tissue samples.
Methods:
We employed an untargeted technique, UHPLC-Q-TOF-MS, to identify the potential metabolite, and then used a targeted technique, GC-TOF-MS, to quantitatively validate. Multivariate and univariate statistics were performed to analyze the metabolomic profiles between stage-I PDAC and healthy controls, including 90 serum and 53 tissue samples. 28 patients with stage-I PDAC and 62 healthy controls were included in this study.
Results:
A total of 10 potential metabolites presented the same expression levels both in serum and in tissue. Among them, a 2-metabolites-model (isoleucine and adrenic acid) for stage-I PDAC was constructed. The area under the curve (AUC) value was 0.93 in the discovery set and 0.90 in the independent validation set. Especially, the serum metabolite model had a better diagnostic performance than CA19-9 (AUC = 0.79). Pathway analysis revealed 11 altered pathways in both serum and tissue of stage-I PDAC.
Conclusions:
This study developed a novel serum metabolites model that could early separate stage-I PDAC from healthy controls.
