Metabolomic profiling for biomarker discovery in pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer (PC) is the fourth leading cause of cancer death in the United States, with 4% survival, 5 years after diagnosis. Patients with pancreatic cancer are usually diagnosed at late stages, when the disease is incurable. Sensitive and more specific markers are critical for supporting new prevention, diagnostic or therapeutic strategies. Here, we report mass spectrometry-based metabolomic profiling of human pancreas matched tumor and normal tissue. Multivariate data analysis using two independent methods shows significant alterations in the profiles of the tumor metabolome as compared to the normal tissue. These findings offer an information-rich matrix for discovering novel candidate biomarkers with diagnostic or prognostic potential.

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► One of the first reports that tests the feasibility of discerning novel biomarkers from pancreas tumor and normal tissue.
► Use of state of art technology.
► Use of two independent data analysis tools to cross-validate findings.
► Functional pathway analysis using the ingenuity pathway analysis which can lead to potential mechanistic insights.
► In future the markers could be evaluated in bio-fluids for developing minimally invasive assays.