Comparative serum proteomics of Intraductal papillary mucinous neoplasias and pacreatic adenocarcinoma

IPMN tumors are considered precancerous and starting from low grade dysplasia some of them develop IPMN associated or concomitant pancreatic cancer. The prognosis of IPMN is good if the tumor is operated before malignant transformation occurs. On the other hand, not nearly all IPMNs undergo malignant transformation during the patient’s life time. differences in proteins found in serum samples could provide a way to differentiate IPMNs with different states of dysplasia. The aim of our study was to compare the serum protein profiles in sera of patients with IPMN with low or high grade dysplasia, IPMN associated carcinoma and healthy controls. We have quantified 436 serum proteins with two or more unique peptides from 55 serum samples including 11 healthy controls. These proteomic dataset was analyzed with advanced multivariate statistical data analysis techniques to find the protein features which could be used as potential biomarkers of various grades of dysplasia as well as to differentiate dysplasia samples from pancreatic carcinoma.