Ricerc@Sapienza

Background: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) early diagnosis is crucial and new, cheap and user-friendly techniques for biomarker identification are needed. “Protein corona” (PC) is emerging a new bio-interface potentially useful in tumor early diagnosis. In a previous investigation, we showed that relevant differences between the protein patterns of PCs formed on lipid NPs after exposure to PDAC and non-cancer plasma samples exist. To extend that research, We performed this pilot study to investigate the effect of PDAC tumor size and distant metastases on PC composition.

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the fourth cause of cancer-related mortality in the Western world and is envisaged to become the second cause by 2030. Although our knowledge about the molecular biology of PDAC is continuously increasing, this progress has not been translated into better patients’ outcome. Liposomes have been used to circumvent concerns associated with the low efficiency of anticancer drugs such as severe side effects and damage of healthy tissues, but they have not resulted in improved efficacy as yet.