BACKGROUND: The increase in incidence of early-onset pancreatic cancer (EOPC) is of concern and poorly understood. The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical outcomes of surgically resected patients with EOPC and the potential molecular heterogeneity between EOPC and late age-onset disease. METHODS: A retrospective cohort study was conducted, with clinical, pathological, and survival outcome data obtained from two large independent prospective cohorts curated by the Australian Pancreatic Genome Initiative (APGI) and the West of Scotland Pancreatic Unit (Glasgow Royal Infirmary) between 1997 and 2022. Patients were categorized into two age groups (<50 and ≥50 years) at time of diagnosis. Clinicopathological features and survival outcomes, in addition to gene expression and tumour microenvironment data, were compared between groups. RESULTS: In total, 851 patients were identified, of whom 68 (8%) were aged <50 years. EOPC was associated with significantly earlier recurrence after surgery (median disease-free survival (DFS) 10.9 versus 14.2 months; P = 0.011) and there was no statistically significant difference in disease-specific survival (median 19.9 versus 23.8 months; P = 0.117). There were no differences in validated clinicopathological variables to account for the shorter DFS in the EOPC group. Despite an increased proportion of patients with EOPC receiving adjuvant chemotherapy (P = 0.032), DFS was significantly worse (DFS 12.6 versus 16.0 months; P = 0.022). EOPC demonstrated enrichment of genes associated with more aggressive molecular pathology and the squamous (basal-like) molecular subtype of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, including S100A2 (P < 0.001) and TP63 (P = 0.044), and down-regulation of GATA6 (P = 0.016). CONCLUSION: EOPC is associated with a shorter time to recurrence and more aggressive, adverse molecular pathology.
Dreyer et al. (2026) studied this question.