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OBJECTIVES: Biomarkers that detect pancreatic cancer at earlier stages could improve the outcome of this deadly disease. METHODS: We investigated a dozen biomarker candidates for their potential as pancreatic cancer blood biomarkers using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. RESULTS: Among them, the macrophage migration inhibitory factor and osteopontin blood tests were nearly perfect in distinguishing pancreatic cancer cases from healthy controls (100% and 95% sensitivity, respectively, at 100% specificity). Five biomarker candidates were then tested on an expanded set of diseased controls, which included sera from patients with pancreatitis. The sensitivity dropped significantly for all 5 candidate markers. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that biomarker candidates could fail in various steps of biomarker development. Earlier knowledge of candidate biomarker flaws could lead to strategies to overcome the flaw or alternatively lead to earlier termination of biomarkers that are prone to failure in the later phases of validation testing.
Chen et al. (Thu,) studied this question.