A research group including Professor Taro Yamashita of the Faculty of Medicine, Institute of Medical, Pharmaceutical and Health Sciences, Kanazawa University, Associate Professor Hajime Takatori, Director of the Endoscopy Center at Kanazawa University Hospital, and Assistant Professor Masaki Miyazawa of the Innovative Research and Development Center for Pancreatic Cancer at Kanazawa University Hospital, successfully detected 90% of stage 0-I pancreatic cancers using gene expression patterns in peripheral whole blood. The results were published in Scientific Reports.
Diagnostic performance of peripheral whole blood gene expression patterns (mRNA), tumor marker CA19-9, and combined test (Panregza) for the diagnosis of stage 0-I pancreatic cancer.
Provided by Kanazawa University
Pancreatic cancer is a typical refractory cancer. According to cancer statistics from the National Cancer Center, the five-year survival rate for 2009-2011 was extremely low at 8.5%, making it the most highly malignant cancer. Because pancreatic cancer has an extremely high capacity for invasion into surrounding organs and distant metastasis, most cases are discovered at an advanced stage. The diagnosis of early-stage pancreatic cancer is extremely difficult. On the other hand, it has been reported that when detected early and given curative treatment, the five-year survival rate can reach over 85%, making early detection the key to improving prognosis.
The research group has previously developed Panregza, a pancreatic cancer diagnostic test combining peripheral whole-blood gene expression patterns and the serum tumor marker CA19-9 primarily for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer, and reported its usefulness in pancreatic cancer diagnosis. However, the extent to which this method is effective in detecting early-stage pancreatic cancer had not been clear until now.
Among 253 pancreatic cancer patients who visited Kanazawa University Hospital between 2020 and 2024, 10 patients (4%) diagnosed with Stage 0 or I early-stage pancreatic cancer were tested by three types of tests. The diagnostic performance of peripheral whole-blood gene expression patterns (mRNA), the widely used tumor marker CA19-9, and a combined test (Panregza) was evaluated in these patients and compared with that in 104 healthy controls. Using peripheral whole-blood gene expression patterns with 56 types of gene probes, 9 out of 10 early-stage pancreatic cancer cases (90%) were successfully detected.
On the other hand, CA19-9 detected only 1 of 10 cases (10%), showing a significant difference in detection performance between the two. In the healthy control group, 31 out of 104 cases (30%) showed abnormal values in peripheral whole-blood gene expression patterns, compared with only 3 cases (3%) for CA19-9. In addition, the sensitivity and specificity of Panregza, which combines both, were 60% and 93.3%, respectively.
These results indicated that peripheral whole-blood gene expression patterns are a highly effective test in diagnosing early-stage pancreatic cancer as well. The five-year survival rates for pancreatic cancer patients at Kanazawa University Hospital are extremely favorable, at 100% for Stage 0 and 74.4% for Stage I, demonstrating that early diagnosis plays a major role in improving prognosis.
This study revealed the possibility that changes in peripheral whole-blood gene expression occur from an extremely early stage in pancreatic cancer patients. Peripheral whole-blood gene expression patterns demonstrated higher detection sensitivity compared with conventional tumor markers. On the other hand, cases showing abnormal values in peripheral whole-blood gene expression patterns were also observed in a portion of the healthy control population. Further analysis in the future will be required regarding the factors behind this.
Moving forward, by advancing the development of decision algorithms with higher specificity and verifying combinations with existing or novel tumor markers, the creation of a diagnostic method to detect early-stage pancreatic cancer in a minimally invasive manner is expected.
Journal Information
Publication: Scientific Reports
Title: Pilot validation of a whole-blood mRNA expression-based diagnostic system for early-stage pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma: a single-center case-control diagnostic accuracy study
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-58684-8
This article has been translated by JST with permission from The Science News Ltd. (https://sci-news.co.jp/). Unauthorized reproduction of the article and photographs is prohibited.