Application of cancer screening test for the detection of pancreatic tumor in genetically engineered mice.

Abstract

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) exhibits a very early onset of metastasis. Thus, early detection and treatment are pivotal to successful eradication of pancreatic cancers. Economical and non-invasive cancer screening systems is indispensable for this purpose. Previously our group developed a novel method to detect various kinds of human cancer using nematode that respond to cancer odor in urine; however, whether this method is useful for non-human species remains to be understood. In this study, we examined its effectiveness in the detection of murine pancreatic tumor spontaneously generated in genetically-engineered mice. We generated pancreas-specific and/or deletion mutant mice and measured the probability of spontaneous tumor generation in these mice. The chemotactic indexes of to the urine samples of these mutant mice were measured. As previously described, oncogenic was necessary to induce pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia in this mouse model, while c mutation did not show further effect. The chemotactic analysis indicated that avoids urine of healthy recipient mice, while they tended to be attracted to urine of mice with . Our study demonstrated that can recognize the odor of pancreatic cancer in urine of model mouse, suggesting the similarity of cancer odor between species. Our result facilitates further studies on mechanism of cancer detection by .