Background
The trends of pancreatic cancer (PanCa) incidence and mortality are on rising pattern, and it will be a second leading cause of cancer related deaths by 2030. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), major form of PanCa, exhibits a grim prognosis as mortality rate is very close to the incidence rate, due to lack of early detection
Conclusion
Our observations clearly cite that CEACAM7 can serve as a potential early diagnostic and/or prognostic marker of PDAC and may also potentiate the sensitivity of the existing biomarker panel of PDAC. However, further studies are warranted to determine its clinical significance.
Results
PanCa gene and protein expression analysis demonstrated the significantly higher expression of CEACAM7 in PDAC, compared to other cancers and normal pancreas. Overall survival analysis demonstrated an association between the higher expression of CEACAM7 and poor patients' prognosis with high hazard ratio. Additionally, in a performance comparison analysis CEACAM7 outperformed S100A4 in relation to PDAC. We also observed an increase of CEACAM7 in PDAC cell line panel model. However, poorly differentiated, and normal cell lines did not show any expression. Human tissue analysis also strengthened our data by showing strong and positive IHC staining in early-stage tumors.