Antigens of Normal and Malignant Human Exocrine Pancreatic Cells

Abstract

Pancreatic cancer is currently the fourth leading cause of cancer-related death in the United States (Cohn, 1976). The diagnosis of pancreatic adenocarcinoma is usually a late event in the disease, which has a 5-yr survival rate of less than 2% (Hirayama et al., 1980). Early signs and symptoms of this disease are often vague or lacking, except for occasional obstructive jaundice or major vascular involvement. Ascites, liver involvement, and other signs of advanced disease are often the presenting physical findings. It is not yet clear whether the low survival rate is due to a late stage of disease presentation, the early development of metastases, or other factors. The few survivors, however, are almost exclusively patients in whom a tumor was detected fortuitously and surgically excised at an early, premetastatic stage. This fact suggests that early diagnosis could substantially improve the prognosis for the disease and has stimulated many attempts at defining systems for early diagnosis including: exploratory surgery and biopsy (Mikal, 1964; Wave, 1975); ultrasonic scanning (Filly and Fiemanis, 1970); selective arteriography with hypotonic duodenography (Suzuki et al., 1974); computerized transaxial tomography (Sorabella et al., 1974); endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (Fukumoto et al., 1974); and pancreatic functional tests (Cohn, 1976). Unfortunately, to date such attempts have not been useful as cancer-screening tests.