Early detection of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma using abnormal urinary fragmentation ratio of a liver-originated protein.

214Background: Non PDAC tissue-originated proteins are cleaved by proteases derived from PDAC, which can result in abnormal cleavage patterns in the urine of PDAC patients. Urinary proteomic analysis for quantifying the ratios of the abnormal protein fragments to the non-fragmented protein levels in the urine may be useful to distinguish early PDAC from healthy controls. This proof-of-concept study was planned to determine the usefulness of measuring the protein fragments from non PDAC tissue-originated proteins in the urine using the multiple-reaction-monitoring technique (MRM) for discriminating resectable PDAC from healthy controls. Methods: Urinary proteins were digested with trypsin, and resultant peptides were measured by MRM analysis and the ratio of the level of each fragment to the non-fragmented protein level (fragmentation ratio) was calculated. Fragments for which the fragmentation ratios were higher in the PDAC group than those in the healthy group were defined as abnormal protein fragments. ...