New preprint: Multianalyte blood-based risk stratification of incidental pancreas lesions

New preprint from our lab describes promising results of a collaborative project led by Dr. Clayton Marcinak, developing a multianalyte blood test for detection of pancreatic cancer in patients with high-risk incidental lesions. Clayton was a General Surgery resident who spent his research time in our lab.

The project utilized GALYFRE, an approach for plasma DNA fragmentation analysis we published in Science Translational Medicine last year, re-trained and validated here for detection of pancreatic cancer. We compared performance of plasma DNA fragmentation analysis with glycoprotein biomarkers CA19-9, CEA and CA125, and propose a combination approach for detection of advanced lesions in patients undergoing endoscopic ultrasounds or surgery for high-risk incidental pancreas lesions.

Pending peer review, we are hoping to expand the work into larger, multi-center studies to validate the performance of this multianalyte approach and evaluate its role as a complement to existing surveillance strategies for patients at high-risk of developing pancreatic cancer.

Results of an ongoing collaboration with Pancreas Cancer Prevention Clinic led by Dr. Rebecca Minter at UW-Madison Department of Surgery and UW Carbone Cancer Center, and many other colleagues including Drs. Patrick Pfau at UW-Madison, Drs. Shivan Sivakumar  at University of Birmingham and Dr. Adam Frampton at University of Surrey.

You can read more here.