Ye-Eun Kim1, Ki-Young Kim, Jin Woo Min, Mi Jung Kim3 , Hee Cheol Kang
Objective: Pancreatic cancer diagnosis is difficult because it usually doesn’t have symptoms until cancer migration. So, it was called the ‘King of cancer’. To diagnose pancreatic cancer, commonly CA 19-9 was used, but CA 19-9 has some problems that make it difficult to use solely to diagnose pancreatic cancer. Therefore, new biomarkers for prognosis and diagnosis of pancreatic cancer were urgently required.
Design: To find exosomal biomarkers, screening was performed using qRT-PCR with exosomal protein coding 7145 genes. Among the candidates, AZGP1 of cell pellets and exosomes was detected by western blot. To check whether exosomal AZGP1 affects cancer migration, the transmembrane assay was performed.
Result: The gene expression of AZGP1 is only detected in LNCaP and AsPC-1 among tested samples. Interestingly, AZGP1 was detected in the entire pancreatic cancer cell lines tested with different 2 types in the exosome. SNU pancreatic cancer cell lines showed only one type (lower type) of AZGP1. According to transmembrane assay, a lower form of exosomal AZGP1 could induce cancer migration better than higher type of AZGP1 and negative control.
Conclusion: AZGP1 can detect all of the pancreatic cancer cell lines. According to proteomics data, exosomal AZGP1 expression and pattern were different between pancreatic cancer patients and healthy people. Exosomal AZGP1 should be a good candidate to diagnose pancreatic cancer. Moreover, the lower type of exosomal AZGP1 can induce cancer migration better than other types of AZGP1, and this suggested that Korean-derived cancer cell lines might migrate faster than others.