UF Health Cancer Center researchers have developed a promising method to detect pancreatic cancer by using extracellular vesicles, which are nano-sized particles released by cells that can serve as biomarkers of cancer.
The preliminary findings could lead to a simple, non-invasive blood test to find pancreatic cancer before it has metastasized, or spread throughout the body. In most cases, pancreatic cancer is not found until it has advanced, when surgery is usually not possible.
“We addressed two major challenges to harnessing the power of extracellular vesicle blood tests for early detection of pancreatic cancer,” said Zachary Greenberg, a doctoral student in the UF College of Pharmacy and lead author of the new study in the Journal of Nanobiotechnology. Greenberg works in the lab of UF Health Cancer Center member Mei He, Ph.D., the study’s senior author and an associate professor of pharmaceutics.
The team developed a simple clinical tool called ExCy to sample blood plasma and obtain extracellular vesicles. Next, they developed a first-of-its-kind algorithm called the ExoQuality index, or EQI, to ensure the extracellular vesicles were high quality.
By combining the two tools, they discovered a strong mRNA-based pancreatic cancer biomarker carried by extracellular vesicles, known as ATP6V0b.
The researchers then compared the two new methods to three commercial methods using the same patient samples. None of the commercial methods detected pancreatic cancer-related mRNA markers, which indicates the strength of the new methods.
“Our evidence shows that ATP6V0b can distinguish between metastatic and non-metastatic pancreatic cancer and achieve a diagnostic power of 88% for early detection when using plasma from a small group of pancreatic cancer patients and healthy individuals,” said Greenberg.
The research team used the state-of-the-art Illumina NovaSeq 6000 in the UF ICBR NextGen DNA Sequencing Core to sample mRNAs inside extracellular vesicles. They also used advanced computational methods, including an established pipeline for cross-species cancer analyses pioneered by UF Health Cancer Center member Kiley Graim, Ph.D., a co-author and assistant professor in the UF Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering.
Next, the team will build on their tools to advance the method to clinical use, with the goal of applying it to all cancers.
In addition to He and Graim, co-authors from the UF Health Cancer Center were Thomas Schmittgen, Ph.D., Song Han, Ph.D., and Steven Hughes, M.D.
The study received funding from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences and National Cancer Institute, both part of the National Institutes of Health, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and the UF Health Cancer Center, which receives crucial support for its research from the Casey DeSantis Cancer Research Act (Fla. Stat. § 381.915).
Last year, Greenberg also received a UF Health Cancer Center Predoctoral Award for his research using artificial intelligence to drive extracellular vesicle engineering.
