CA19-9 is the FDA approved biomarker for the diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. However, the specificity of CA19-9 to differentiate between pancreatic cancer, cholangiocarcinoma, or other pancreatic lesions is not satisfying enough.
Tumor cells secret abundant exosomes in the early stage. Circulating tumor cells are detected mainly in the advanced stage. Meanwhile, the role of non-coding RNA draws more and more attention in tumor area. Exosomes protect inside RNA from plasma RNase. Compared with long RNA, small RNA, including miRNA, snoRNA, tRNA, piRNA could exist more stably.
By means of next-generation sequencing, we look forward to finding new exosomal small RNA biomarkers.
