Scientists in Calcutta have identified five molecular signatures in the blood that they say could help detect pancreatic cancer early and drive the development of novel drugs for the disease often caught too late and hard to treat.

Geneticist Nilabja Sikdar in Calcutta, with collaborators in Jadavpur University, Israel and the US, has found that patients with pancreatic cancer have either elevated or lowered levels of specific proteins compared to people without this cancer.

“We believe these proteins — either individually or in combination — could serve as biomarkers or signatures for pancreatic cancer,” said Sikdar, formerly at the Indian Statistical Institute and now at the Estuarine and Coastal Studies Foundation, Calcutta.

Pancreatic cancer is rare in India — ranked 21st in men and 17th in women — but highly aggressive, with a five-year survival rate near 10 per cent. A research review published by doctors at the Tata Memorial Centre in Mumbai in 2021 had noted that over 80 per cent of pancreatic cancer patients were diagnosed late, underscoring the need for early detection and treatment.

The ISI researchers used two international cancer genome databases and artificial intelligence tools to look for patterns of either unusually elevated or lowered protein biomarkers from around 2,000 samples of DNA or genetic material from pancreatic cancer patients.

Their study has identified a set of seven proteins whose parent genes are either more or less active in pancreatic cancer and that appear to play a role in either cancer initiation or progression.

Earlier studies by researchers elsewhere in the world had tied all seven proteins to various other cancers — breast, colon, gastrointestinal tract, liver, ovaries and prostate — and two of the seven proteins to pancreatic cancer.

The Calcutta team has found that the other five proteins could also be potential biomarkers for pancreatic cancer. “Our study involved only digitally preserved genomic data — the findings will need to be validated through studies on pancreatic cancer patients,” Sikdar said.

This validation process will seek to determine whether and how blood concentrations of these biomarkers, individually or in combination, vary in patients with different stages of pancreatic cancer or in the same patient as the cancer advances over time.

“Abnormal concentrations of these biomarkers could help in early detection,” Sikdar said.

The study, published in the journal Computers in Biology and Medicine, has suggested that four of these proteins or their parent genes could also be potential “targets” for novel drugs. These genes play different roles in the growth and spread of cells and the goal would be to find or design new molecules that can block these processes, Sikdar said.