Abstract B009: Identifying of a novel diagnostic markers for pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors by proteomics with patient blood

Abstract Neuroendocrine tumors are tumors originating from endocrine cells in various organs, and present very heterogeneous characteristics, and the incidence rate is gradually increasing. Among them, neuroendocrine tumors originating from pancreas are divided into functional tumors and non-functional tumors according to the presence hormone secretion function. Since non-functional tumors are often asymptomatic, early diagnosis is not easy, and differential diagnosis from pancreas ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is difficult, making it difficult to determine the direction of treatment. Therefore, we aimed to find protein biomarkers for the diagnosis and differential diagnosis of pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PNET) through proteomic analysis of human blood. First, a total of 60 human plasma samples were obtained from 17 PNETs, 23 PDACs, and 20 Healthy donors (HD), and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) proteomics analysis was performed. For 60 cases of raw data obtained through LC-MS analysis, identification and label-free quantification were performed through the Human swissprot protein sequence database. Through pre-processing and normalization, an average of 549 protein lists for each sample were obtained. And through quantitative evaluation, the proteomes that were increased or decreased for each disease were analyzed and classified, and ACTR3, CD163, and LECT2, which were increased in PNET, were selected as diagnostic biomarker candidates. The diagnostic AUC for distinguishing PNET from HD was 0.706 for ACTR3, 0.971 for CD163, and 0.541 for LECT2. The diagnostic AUC to distinguish PNET from PDAC was 0.821 for ACTR3, 0.870 for CD163, and 0.783 for LECT2. We selected three candidates, ACTR3, CD163, and LECT2, as blood biomarkers for the accurate diagnosis of PNET. And through the combination of markers, it is expected that the sensitivity and accuracy of the diagnosis can be further increased. In the future, we will study the function as a marker that can simultaneously predict diagnosis and treatment response by identifying the molecular biological mechanism for the generation and progression of PNET through these three markers. Citation Format: Eun-Young Koh, Ji Hye Jeong, Hee-Sung Ahn, Kyunggon Kim, Eunsung Jun. Identifying of a novel diagnostic markers for pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors by proteomics with patient blood [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference in Cancer Research: Pancreatic Cancer; 2023 Sep 27-30; Boston, Massachusetts. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(2 Suppl):Abstract nr B009.