Ricerc@Sapienza

Pancraetic cancer is a highly letal malignancy. Up to 40% of patients found unresectable at exploratory laparoscopy/tomy and more than one third of eventually resected patients will need a vascular resection in order to achieve a radical pancreatectomy, of those barely a half of specimens will confirm an histological invasion. Clinical preoperative staging is inaccurate in predicting resectability but unfortunately whether patients should undergo neoadjuvant therapy or surgery first relies on weak bases.
Liquid biopsy provides an non-invasive signature of the tumor. Analyzing mutations on cell-free nucleic acids gives translational information on tumor biology and therefore on its clinico-pathological features and likely on its progression. In order to better stage patients candidated to pancreatectomy for ductal adenocarcinoma of the pancreas, we aim to find a non-invasive signature of vascular invasion by analyzing key-genes mutations on cell-free DNA.  This pilot study will led to a wider multicentric validation study.