Break the barrier of the king of cancer!

Due to the extremely low survival rate and short survival period, pancreatic cancer has always been called the king of cancer

According to Professor Ralph Hruban of Johns Hopkins University, patients with pancreatic cancer usually cannot undergo surgery after diagnosis, and the five-year survival rate is less than 10%

Unfortunately, pancreatic cancer does not cause a strong response from the immune system, and immunotherapy for pancreatic cancer is also difficult to progress

The direction of scientists in the fight against pancreatic cancer seems to be very foggy

In this study, a total of 140 pancreatic tumor samples were collected, 67 of which corresponded to normal tissues adjacent to the tumor of patients with pancreatic cancer, and 9 pancreatic tissues of individuals without cancer

▲Study diagram (picture source: reference [1])

With pancreatic tissues from different sources, researchers began to try to find genetic differences in these tissues at the whole genome level, including DNA coding sequences, some modifications that can determine whether DNA is turned on or off, mRNA, and microRNAs that can regulate gene expression

These genetic data allow them to find proteins that are more expressed by pancreatic cancer cells, and to determine what modifications are made on these proteins, which may change the function of the protein

From the analysis results, pancreatic cancer cells are more likely to have mutations in some genes found in previous studies, such as KRAS, TP53, CDKN2A and SMAD4

Compared with normal pancreatic cells, the expression levels of 222 proteins in pancreatic cancer cells have increased by a factor of two.

Some of these glycosylated proteins will be directly secreted by pancreatic cancer cells, which suggests to researchers that these proteins are likely to enter the blood.

In addition, the study also found some specific protein level changes.

▲Two kinases have been dysregulated in pancreatic cancer tissues (picture source: reference [1])

Note: The original text has been deleted

Reference materials:

[1] Liwei Cao et al, Proteogenomic characterization of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, Cell (2021).

[2] Unique aspects of pancreatic cancer proteins could lead to early detection, new treatments.