Early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer (PC) is critical to reduce the mortality rate of this disease. Current biological analysis approaches cannot robustly detect several low abundance PC biomarkers in sera, limiting the clinical application of these biomarkers. Enzyme linked immunosorbent assay and radioimmunoassay are two common platforms for detection of biomarkers; however, they suffer from some limitation. This study demonstrates a novel system for multiplex detection of pancreatic biomarkers CA19-9, MMP7 and MUC4 in sera samples with high sensitivity using surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy. Measuring the levels of these biomarkers in PC patients, pancreatitis patients, and healthy individuals reveals the unique expression pattern of these markers in PC patients, suggesting the great potential of using this approach for early diagnostics of PCs.
Pancreatic cancer (PC) is an aggressive malignancy with an exceptionally high mortality rate because it lacks effective early diagnosis methods. To improve the ability to diagnose PC, the identification of biomarkers that can differentiate PC patients from both normal controls (NC) and those with chronic pancreatitis (CP) is vital. This study demonstrates the detection of extracellular vesicles (EVs) as an excellent resource of diagnostic biomarkers in serum samples from NC individuals, and CP and PC patients using a surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS)-based immunoassay technique. The assay uses the Au-CD81-EVs-EphA2-Au complex to capture PC tumor-derived EVs specifically and produces highly localized regions of intense field enhancement (hot spots) concurrently. Applying a machine learning algorithm to the analysis of the expression level of EVs biomarkers in PC, CP, and NC individuals, the sensitivity and specificity were measured as 0.95 and 0.96, respectively.Measuring PC tumor-derived EVs' expression levels in serum of PC patients, CP patients, and NC individuals suggests the great potential of using this biomarker to differentiate pancreatic cancers from chronic pancreatitis.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.