A compendium of potential biomarkers of pancreatic cancer

Abstract

Akhilesh Pandey and colleagues describe a compendium of potential biomarkers that can be systematically validated by the pancreatic cancer community.

Figure 1. The curation protocol for generating the catalog of potential biomarkers.

The curation protocol was entirely based on the published articles and data submitted to public repositories. Along with the list of molecules that are overexpressed in pancreatic cancers, literature evidence for their presence in plasma membrane and detectability in body fluids like serum was also searched for. The list includes overexpression studies from both endocrine and exocrine neoplasms of the pancreas.

Figure 2. Criteria for inclusion as a potential biomarker.

The primary criterion in compiling candidate biomarkers of pancreatic cancer was to identify molecules with an experimental evidence of overexpression either at mRNA or protein levels from the published literature. All molecules included in the list of potential biomarkers were required to have a minimum of 2-fold overexpression in cancer as compared to normal. Proteins reported to be overexpressed based on non-quantitative proteomic experiments were included only when there was additional evidence by alternative methods. Candidates from studies using antibody-based strategies like immunohistochemistry (IHC), ELISA, and Western blots were included without regard to fold changes, provided they were reported to be overexpressed in cancer as compared to normal.