Biomarcadors moleculars no invasius pel càncer de pàncrees

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most lethal types of cancer, especially in developed countries, and statistics predict that the mortality rate will continue increasing until it becomes the second deadliest cancer. The lack of routine controls, the difficulty in diagnosis, the ambiguity of image techniques, the lack of efficient clinical treatments, and, -in general-, the lack of knowledge about this cancer biology are the main reasons that lead to such low survival rate. The only serum tumour biomarker currently used is carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA19-9), which is not sensitive or specific enough to be used as a method of diagnosis, but only as a tool for monitoring the disease. In recent decades, many studies have searched for sensitive and specific tumour biomarkers detectable in fluids, which would allow early diagnosis of the disease. Specifically, many scientists have chosen to study aberrant glycosylation patterns (alterations in the composition or structure of glycans or their density in a protein) from glycoproteomic studies, since they have been seen to play an important role in the development of cancer, promoting the invasiveness, chemoresistance and modulating the immune response. The objective of this paper is to discuss the most promising future perspectives in the field of biomarkers, more specifically, addressing it to the altered glycosylation patterns, for the detection of pancreatic cancer. Many candidates have been proposed to be optimal markers, which include glycoproteins such as RNase1, various acute phase proteins such as α-1 acid glycoprotein, haptoglobin or fetuin, among others. More recent studies have focused on mucins, which are carriers of carbohydrate antigens that are overexpressed in the presence of a tumour, and on other serum glycoproteins such as leukemia inhibitory factor receptor (LIFR), centrosomeassociated protein (CE350) and vacuolar protein sorting-associated protein 13A (VP13A), which show an altered glycosylation pattern in pancreatic cancer patients. The possibility of combining several markers, specifically CA19-9 with CEA, CA125 or with IGF-1 and albumin has also been studied. Despite the advances, the discovery of markers still remains a challenge as they do not show enough specificity to discern pancreatic cancer from other affections such as chronic pancreatitis. For this reason, there is still much study and subsequent validations to be carried out before achieving a sufficiently specific, sensitive, non-invasive and economically affordable biomarker for a more precise and early detection of pancreatic cancer

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Biomarcadors moleculars no invasius pel càncer de pàncrees

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