Improving the accuracy of pancreatic cancer clinical staging by exploitation of nanoparticle-blood interactions: a pilot study

Background: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) early diagnosis is crucial and new, cheap anduser-friendly techniques for biomarker identification are needed. “Protein corona” (PC) is emerging anew bio-interface potentially useful in tumor early diagnosis. In a previous investigation, we showed thatrelevant differences between the protein patterns of PCs formed on lipid NPs after exposure to PDAC andnon-cancer plasma samples exist. To extend that research, We performed this pilot study to investigatethe effect of PDAC tumor size and distant metastases on PC composition.Methods: Twenty PDACs were clinically staged according to the UICC TNM staging system 8 t h Edition.Collected plasma samples were let to interact with lipid NPs; resulting PCs were characterized by SDSPAGE.To properly evaluate changes in the PC, the protein intensity profiles were reduced to four regionsof molecular weight: < 25 kDa, 25e50 kDa, 50e120 kDa, > 120 kDa.Results: Data analysis allowed to distinguish T1-T2 cases from T3 and above all from metastatic ones(p < 0.05). Discrimination power was particularly due to a subset of plasma proteins with molecularweight comprised between 25-50 kDa and 50e120 kDa.Conclusions: PC composition is critically influenced by tumor size and presence of distant metastases inPDAC. If our findings will be further confirmed, we envision that future developments of cheap and userfriendlyPC-based tools will allow to improve the accuracy of PDAC clinical staging, identifying amongresectable PDACs with potentially better prognosis (i.e. T1 and T2) those at higher risk of occult distantmetastases.