# Distinguishing Pancreatic Cancer from Benign Pancreatic Disease using Nanoparticle-based Biomarkers

> **NIH NIH R37** · OREGON HEALTH & SCIENCE UNIVERSITY · 2024 · $448,091

## Abstract

Project Summary
This project evaluates the efficacy of using biomarkers carried by tumor-derived exosomes and other organelle-
derived extracellular vesicles to differentiate patients with pancreatic cancer from patients with benign pancreatic
disease. We will use high conductance dielectrophoresis-based technology to simultaneously recover different
types of these cancer-derived nanoparticles from individual samples of volume limited patient plasma. This will
enable access to volume restricted early stage cancer samples. This research will generate new knowledge
supporting the development of a nanoparticle-based biomarker panel for early and late stage pancreatic cancer
detection and will support the rationale to bring nanoparticle-based diagnostics to the clinical setting.
Pancreatic cysts are coincidently discovered with increasing frequency as the use of high resolution CT and MRI
imaging increases, with up to 9.3% of patients having an asymptomatic cyst. An invasive endoscopic ultrasound
guided fine needle aspiration biopsy (EUS/FNA) is traditionally used to determine if the cyst is pancreatic ductal
adenocarcinoma (PDAC). This has a high financial cost and associated health risk where 1/100 patients will
develop acute pancreatitis and 1/10 of these patients will die. Currently 60-76% of patients that undergo
EUS/FNA do not have pancreatic cancer. This signifies the unmet clinical need to develop a blood test to stratify
patients with pancreatic cysts into categories of high-probability and low-probability for having PDAC, where
high-probability would benefit from the EUS/FNA. Currently, no blood based PDAC biomarkers exist. Tumor-
derived nanoparticles offer a new source of potential PDAC related biomarkers. The challenge is that traditional
nanoparticle recovery methods for each nanoparticle type require plasma volumes that are too large to be
supported with currently available PDAC patient plasma samples. Our preliminary data now suggest that high
conductance dielectrophoresis (DEP) techniques can recover sufficient amounts of nanoparticle derived
biomarkers to detect precancerous lesions as well as differentiate early and late stage PDAC from controls and
requires only 30 µl of plasma. Each Aim will translate our DEP validation of individual biomarkers into a panel
that will be evaluated in a blinded cohort study consisting of patients with PDAC and benign pancreatic disease.
We focus Aim 1 on particles actively released by tumors, and Aim 2 on different cellular organelle fragments.
Aim 3 evaluates these biomarkers, and five from our preliminary data, on stage 1 and 2 PDAC samples.
The significance of this research is that the knowledge generated will lead to potential validation of a panel of
nanoparticle-associated biomarkers capable of differentiating PDAC from benign pancreatic disease. The
research proposed here may ultimately support the rationale for the clinical development of a nanoparticle-based
diagnostic blood test to identi...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10769729
- **Project number:** 5R37CA258787-03
- **Recipient organization:** OREGON HEALTH & SCIENCE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Stuart Duncan Ibsen
- **Activity code:** R37 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2024
- **Award amount:** $448,091
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2022-01-01 → 2026-12-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10769729

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10769729, Distinguishing Pancreatic Cancer from Benign Pancreatic Disease using Nanoparticle-based Biomarkers (5R37CA258787-03). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10769729. Licensed CC0.

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