Measurement of urinary kininogen (KNG) fragments as a noninvasive tool for early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer (PaCa).

209Background: There is a clear need to identify a non-invasive biomarker for early diagnosis of PaCa, in order to improve the overall survival of PaCa patients. Secretion of large amounts of proteases is a hallmark of PaCa, which results in an abundance of protease-induced cleavage products being excreted in the urine. This has led to speculation that measurement of PaCa-specific fragments in the urine might be useful as a tool for discrimination between PaCa patients and healthy controls. Herein, we introduce urinary KNG fragments as a promising biomarker for early diagnosis of PaCa. Methods: Urine samples were collected from PaCa patients and healthy volunteers, with the written informed consent, from January 2014 to July 2016. Urinary protein tryptic fragments derived from protein C-termini were measured using isobaric tags (iTRAQ) for their relative quantitation, and the diagnostic ability of the urinary levels of these fragments was evaluated by receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis...