Diagnostic value of combining preoperative inflammatory markers ratios with CA199 for patients with early-stage pancreatic cancer.

BACKGROUND: An early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer (PC) is extremely difficult because of the lack of sensitive liquid biopsy methods and effective biomarkers. We attempted to evaluate whether circulating inflammatory marker could complement CA199 for the detection of early-stage PC. METHODS: We enrolled 430 patients with early-stage PC, 287 patients with other pancreatic tumors (OPT), and 401 healthy controls (HC). The patients and HC were randomly divided into a training set (n = 872) and two testing sets (n1 = 218, n2 = 28). The receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were investigated to evaluate the diagnostic performance of circulating inflammatory markers ratios, CA199, and combinations of the markers ratios in the training set, which would then be validated in the two testing sets. RESULTS: Circulating fibrinogen, neutrophils, and monocytes in patients with PC were significantly higher while circulating albumin, prealbumin, lymphocytes, and platelets of patients with PC were significantly lower compared to those of HC and OPT (all P < 0.05). The fibrinogen-to-albumin (FAR), fibrinogen-to-prealbumin (FPR), neutrophil-to-lymphocyte (NLR), platelet-to-lymphocyte (PLR), monocyte-to-lymphocyte (MLR), and fibrinogen-to-lymphocyte (FLR) ratios were significantly higher while the prognostic nutrition index values (PNI) were lower in patients with PC than in HC and OPT (all P < 0.05). Combining the FAR, FPR, and FLR with CA199 exhibited the best diagnostic value for distinguishing patients with early-stage PC from HC with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.964, and for distinguishing patients with early-stage PC from OPT with an AUC of 0.924 in the training sets. In the testing set, compared with HC, the combination markers had powerful efficiency for PC with an AUC 0.947 and AUC 0.942 when comparing PC with OPT. The AUC was 0.915 for the combination of CA199, FAR, FPR, and FLR for differentiating between patients with pancreatic head cancer (PHC) and other pancreatic head tumors (OPHT), and 0.894 for differentiating between patients with pancreatic body and tail cancer (PBTC) and other pancreatic body and tail tumors (OPBTT). CONCLUSION: A combination of FAR, FPR, FLR, and CA199 may serve as a potential non-invasive biomarker for differentiating early-stage PC from HC and OPT, especially early-stage PHC.

Rapid and sensitive detection of tenuazonic acid in agricultural by-products based on gold nano-flower lateral flow.

Tenuazonic acid (TA) is a highly toxic mycotoxin mainly generated by the fungi of Alternaria genus and widely contaminates agricultural by-products. Given the threat of TA to food-security, it is very important to develop rapid and sensitive detection methods for TA monitoring. In this study, gold nano-particles (AuNP) with average diameter near 17.25 nm were prepared, and the developed AuNP-based strip has an assay time of 15 min with visual limit of detection (LOD) of 12.5 ng/ml and threshold of 100 ng/ml. To further improve sensitivity, multi-branched gold nano-flowers (AuNF) with average diameter near 50 nm were prepared and characterized by UV-VIS and TEM, and the established AuNF-based strip has visual LOD of 0.78 ng/ml and threshold of 50 ng/ml within 15 min. Both assays were applied to determine TA in apple juice and tomato ketchup, and the results were consistent with that of UHPLC-MS/MS. Thus, these assays could be applied for rapid determination of trace TA in real samples.

Inhibition of glutathione metabolism can limit the development of pancreatic cancer.

Pharmacological inhibitors of glutathione synthesis and circulation, such as buthionine-sulfoximine, inhibit glutathione metabolism. These drugs decrease the aggressiveness of pancreatic cancer, inhibit tumor stem cell survival, and reduce chemotherapy resistance. Nevertheless, buthionine-sulfoximine also decreases the content of glutathione in normal cells, disrupts the balance between reactive oxygen species and glutathione, and eventually induces cell apoptosis. Pancreatic cancer is usually diagnosed at an advanced stage and has a poor prognosis. Consequently, the use of biomarkers to screen high-risk patients can be an effective method.

A high sensitive platinum-modified colloidal gold immunoassay for tenuazonic acid detection based on monoclonal IgG.

Due to the threat of tenuazonic acid (TA) to public health, it is urgent to establish rapidly effective and sensitive assay methods for TA. In this study, a TA-specific IgG monoclonal antibody (McAb) with high affinity (Kaff was 1.72 × 1010 L/mol) was screened, and the developed icELISA for TA detection has IC50 of 2.50 ng/mL and LOD of 0.17 ng/mL. Platinum-modified gold nanoparticle (Au@PtNP) was optimized as Au@Pt0.4NP, and the resulted Au@Pt0.4NP-McAb probe was designed to catalyze precipitation-type tetramethylbenzidine for visual detection of trace TA with visual LOD of 0.39 ng/mL. The sensitivity of this established Au@Pt0.4NP-McAb strip was highly increased when compared with the existing colloidal gold strip. The developed strip was used to detect trace TA in apple juice and tomato ketchup which were consistent with the results from UHPLC-MS/MS. Therefore, this developed strip could be used for rapid detection of trace TA in real samples.