Background/aims: To identify potential new tumor markers in peripheral blood mononuclear cells for pancreatic adenocarcinoma screening.
Methodology: The total mRNA was extracted from the peripheral blood mononuclear cell samples of both pancreatic adenocarcinoma patients (n=5) and healthy donors (n=5). Having the RNA expression profiling of over 38500 genes via the Human Genome U133 Plus 2.0 Array performed in order to identify differentially expressed genes, the study underwent real-time Reverse Transcriptase PCR (RT-PCR) for validation.
Results: The mRNA expression profiles identified the Olfactomedin4 gene, which was significantly overexpressed (4.46-fold) versus the control group (p<0.01). Afterwards, this result was validated by quantitative RT-PCR, with the same expression trend (4.80-fold) as well as statistical significance (p<0.05).
Conclusions: Homo sapiens olfactomedin4 was revealed to be up-regulated as a cancer associated gene in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from pancreatic adenocarcinoma patients. Thus, Olfactomedin4, as well as its expression products, might promisingly prove to be the ideal screening tool and new tumor marker available in blood samples.