Madrid. Experts from the National Cancer Research Center (CNIO), led by Núria Malats, and the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL, Heidelberg), led by Peer Bork, found a molecular signature of 27 microorganisms in stool samples that could detect high-risk patients for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, the most common pancreatic cancer, and even diagnose those in earlier stages of the disease.
A patent has been applied for on these results to develop a pancreatic cancer diagnostic kit that detects these microbial genomes in stool samples quickly, non-invasively and cheaply. The study is published this week in the journal gut, one of the most prestigious in the fields of gastroenterology and hepatology.
Pancreatic cancer is not one of the most frequently diagnosed cancers, but it is one of the most lethal: it represents the third oncological cause of death in Spain, behind lung and colorectal cancer, and seventh in the world. Some of the reasons for this high mortality rate are late diagnosis and limited therapeutic options.
The symptomatology of pancreatic cancer is very silent and the symptoms often appear in the later stages of the disease, when the tumors often cannot be removed by surgery.
Therefore, it is urgent and necessary to have non-invasive, specific and affordable tests that are capable of early detection of this disease and improve patient survival.
“In many cases, once it’s detected it’s too late. We need to diagnose the disease in much earlier stages, before symptoms appear, and for this we need to identify and define the population at risk and have good screening tests to detect cancer when it is still curable”, the researchers indicated.
microbiome
Recently obtained data suggest that the microorganisms that coexist with the cells of the human body, the so-called microbiome, could play a role in the origin and development of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.
The researchers conducted a single case-control study with 136 individuals (57 newly diagnosed, 50 controls, and 27 with chronic pancreatitis) with very detailed epidemiological and clinical information, and who had samples of saliva, feces, and pancreatic tissue extracted to analyze their microbiome. .
The patients came from two Spanish hospitals in Madrid (Ramón y Cajal) and in Barcelona (Vall d’Hebron).
“Very advanced biostatistical and bioinformatic analyzes allowed us to build a signature of 27 microbes from feces, most of them bacteria, which very well discriminate cases with pancreatic cancer from controls, both in their most advanced and earliest stages. ”, point out Malats and Bork.
This genetic signature has been validated in an independent study carried out in two hospitals in Germany and in 5,792 fecal metagenomes from 25 studies in 18 countries. It is currently being studied in the Japanese population.
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