IP: Dr. Luis Muñoz Bellvís

Resumen del proyecto: Significant advances have been achieved in the last decade in the understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying normal and neoplastic pancreatic cells, particularly in regard of the pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) disease. However, unlike in other solid tumors (i.e: breast, lung, prostatic or gastric cancer), the molecular characterization of PDAC tumors have not yet contributed to identify consistent diagnostic tumor markers, to a better prediction of patient prognosis and/or survival. This aspect is especially relevant in PDAC, as it constitutes a tumor whose diagnosis typically occurs in advanced stages of the carcinogenesis and is resistant to virtually all current conventional treatments. The identification of a small panel of 5 PDAC markers up-regulated in PDAC tumors by our group in previous studies, would allow for a precise distinction between PDAC and non-tumoral pancreatic tissues. All of these proteins being also found to be secreted and present in both tumor tissues and the plasma. Altogether, the secretion of these proteins outside the tumor cell, supports the potential utility of these genes as candidate markers for non-invasive diagnosis and monitoring of PDAC patients. The confirmation of the expression of these molecules in serum/plasma samples from patients with PDAC and other pancreatic diseases by ELISA assay could provide key information to determine the impact of gene expression profiles of PDAC tumors in the biological and clinical behavior of the disease.