Review of Immunohistochemistry Biomarkers in Pancreatic Cancer Diagnosis

Tuan Trong Luu

doi:10.3389/fonc.2021.799025

Abstract

Pancreatic cancer is one of the cancer types with poor prognosis and high rate of mortality. Diagnostic modalities for early detection of pancreatic cancer have been among the academic concerns. On account of the potential role of immunohistochemistry (IHC) biomarkers in overcoming certain limitations of imaging diagnostic tools in discriminating pancreatic cancer tissues from benign ones, a growing scholarly attention has been given to the diagnostic efficacy of IHC biomarkers for pancreatic cancer. This review will analyze and synthesize published articles to provide an insight into potential IHC biomarkers for pancreatic cancer diagnosis.

Highlights

In the developed countries, pancreatic cancer is presently the fourth leading cancer cause of mortality [1]
IHC biomarkers can contribute to the detection of pancreatic cancer by biologically differentiating pancreatic cancer from benign forms of pancreatic diseases as well as healthy cases [31]
The findings in the current review identifies 22 IHC biomarkers for pancreatic cancer diagnosis, whose sensitivity and specificity can be comparable to this standard IHC biomarker as well as, which can add to the list of diagnostic IHC biomarkers for pancreatic cancer in Liu et al.’s (2012) [12] review

Summary

Introduction

Pancreatic cancer is presently the fourth leading cancer cause of mortality [1]. Age-standardized incident rate of pancreatic cancer is 7.2 per 100,000 in developed countries versus 2.8 in less developed regions [2]. Pancreatic cancer incident rate has gradually accelerated and it is anticipated, within a decade, to increase to the second, behind lung cancer, among the leading cancer-related causes of mortality [3]. Over half of the pancreatic cancer cases have been diagnosed at an advanced stage, which can partially explain its five-year survival rate being under 9% [4]. Current PDAC diagnosis modalities, such as endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (ERCP) and endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine-needle aspiration (EUSFNA), demonstrate clinical limitations [6,7,8]. Difficulties in gathering sufficient diagnostic samples as well as false positive and false negative diagnoses have limited the clinical utility of the EUS-FNA technique [6]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion