A new perspective for the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer: based on the understanding of extracellular vesicle proteins.

INTRODUCTION: Pancreatic cancer (PC) has an insidious onset, limited treatment, and a poor prognosis. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) play a crucial role as a bridge for tumor microenvironment (TME)communication in tumorigenesis and development, especially EV proteins reflect the specificity of tumors. EVs serve as readily available biomarkers, and characterization of their protein profiles is expected to be a noninvasive molecular marker to improve the early diagnosis of Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) as well as potential therapeutic targets.

AREAS COVERED: This review focuses on the mechanism by which all types of EV proteins are involved in PDAC. In addition, this review summarizes EV proteins as potential targets for the diagnosis and treatment of PDAC to fully understand the promise of EV proteins as liquid biopsies for PDAC.

EXPERT OPINION: EVs in the humoral circulation represent an important part of liquid biopsy detection. EV protein profiling can be used as a liquid biopsy tool to detect cancer and distinguish cancer types. EV proteins have the characteristics of high specificity and sensitivity, but in view of the heterogeneity of tumors, EVs can be used as effective carriers for multiple candidate marker panels, and gradually realize personalized medicine for automated detection in the future.