Recent advancement in molecular markers of pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer has been estimated to be the second leading cause of cancer deaths in 2030, although it is the fourth leading cause at present. Modern diagnostic tools and prognosis techniques have been spiking enormously in the field of cancer research, yet pancreatic cancer poses a tough barrier for its prediction and treatments. Although the disease has its own unique characteristics, channelizing these markers for pancreatic cancer diagnosis and treatment is still progressing at a slow pace. With a meager survival rate of just 5 years and most of the pancreatic cancers are being of unresectable type (80%), the need for prognosis is high. Most of the pancreatic cancer patients are diagnosed and treated only at the late stages of the disease, specifically during local advancement and metastasis periods. Most of the pancreatic cancer mutations deal with oncogenic KRAS and mutations of tumor suppressor genes, such as TP53, SMAD4, and CDKN2A. Apart from these markers of pancreatic cancer, signatures of prognosis arise from various sources, such as the pancreatic cancer serum, tissue, juice, and precancerous lesions, and help in handling various aspects of the disease. This chapter puts forward the different prognosis markers capable of identifying pancreatic cancer and the recent development in the domain of pancreatic cancer biomarkers. Rather than a single approach, a multidimensional approach combining both physical and biological prognosis strategies proves to be much useful in predicting and treating the disease.