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REVIEW article

Front. Endocrinol.
Sec. Translational and Clinical Endocrinology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fendo.2024.1401829
This article is part of the Research Topic Exosome-Based Advances in Endocrine and Metabolic Diseases: From Diagnosis to Therapy View all 7 articles

Identification and analysis of Pancreatic Intraepithelial Neoplasia: Opportunities and Challenges

Provisionally accepted
Mei-Hui Song Mei-Hui Song 1Ling-Ling Pian Ling-Ling Pian 1Teng-Fei Wang Teng-Fei Wang 2Ling Qi Ling Qi 2,3*Ke-Ping Xie Ke-Ping Xie 1
  • 1 South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China
  • 2 Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China
  • 3 Qingyuan People's Hospital, Qingyuan, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Pancreatic intraepithelial neoplasia (PanIN) is the most common precursor lesion of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), which has poor prognosis with a short median overall survival of 6-12 months and a low 5-year survival rate of approximately 3%. It is crucial to remove PanIN lesions to prevent the development of invasive PDAC, as PDAC spreads rapidly outside the pancreas. This review aims to provide the latest knowledge on PanIN risk, pathology, cellular origin, genetic susceptibility, and diagnosis, while identifying research gaps that require further investigation in this understudied area of precancerous lesions. PanINs are classified into PanIN 1, PanIN 2, and PanIN 3, with PanIN 3 having the highest likelihood of developing into invasive PDAC. Differentiating between PanIN 2 and PanIN 3 is clinically significant. Genetic alterations found in PDAC are also present in PanIN and increase with the grade of PanIN. Imaging methods alone are insufficient for distinguishing PanIN, necessitating the use of genetic and molecular tests for identification. In addition, metabolomics technologies and miRNAs are playing an increasingly important role in the field of cancer diagnosis, offering more possibilities for efficient identification of PanIN. Although detecting and stratifying the risk of PanIN poses challenges, the combined 3 utilization of imaging, genetics, and metabolomics holds promise for improving patient survival in this field.

    Keywords: PanIN, PDAC, KRAS, Cellular origin, Genetic Susceptibility, diagnosis

    Received: 16 Mar 2024; Accepted: 17 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Song, Pian, Wang, Qi and Xie. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Ling Qi, Qingyuan People's Hospital, Qingyuan, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.