Metabolomic profiling for biomarker discovery in pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer (PC) is the fourth leading cause of cancer death in the United States, with 4% survival 5 years after diagnosis. Patients with pancreatic cancer are usually diagnosed at late stages, when the disease is incurable. Sensitive and more specific biomarkers are thus critical for supporting new prevention, diagnostic or therapeutic strategies. Here, we report mass spectrometry-based metabolomic profiling of human pancreatic tumor and normal tissue. Multivariate data analysis shows significant alterations in the profiles of the tumor metabolome as compared to the normal. These findings offer an information-rich matrix for discovering novel biomarkers with potential for diagnostic or prognostic purposes.