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Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastrointest Oncol. Jun 15, 2017; 9(6): 235-250
Published online Jun 15, 2017. doi: 10.4251/wjgo.v9.i6.235
Detecting circulating tumor material and digital pathology imaging during pancreatic cancer progression
Radim Moravec, Rao Divi, Mukesh Verma
Radim Moravec, Surveillance Research Program, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Rockville, MD 20850, United States
Rao Divi, Mukesh Verma, Methods and Technologies Branch, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, Rockville, MD 20850, United States
Author contributions: Moravec R wrote the paper; Divi R and Verma M contributed equally by providing guidance and editorial review.
Supported by Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, NIH, Rockville, MD 22805, United States.
Conflict-of-interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest to report in preparing this work including but not limited to financial, commercial, personal, political, intellectual or religious interests.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Mukesh Verma, PhD, Branch Chief, Methods and Technologies Branch, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, 9000 Rockville Pike, Rockville, MD 20850, United States. vermam@mail.nih.gov
Telephone: +1-240-2766889 Fax: +1-240-2767921
Received: January 4, 2017
Peer-review started: January 7, 2017
First decision: February 17, 2017
Revised: March 4, 2017
Accepted: March 23, 2017
Article in press: March 24, 2017
Published online: June 15, 2017
Processing time: 160 Days and 23.4 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Pancreatic cancer (PC) is a leading cause of cancer-related death. PC mutations accumulate 20 years before patient death with metastatic mutations occurring late in the process. Metastatic risk increases dramatically when tumor diameter is greater than 1 cm. Most PC cases are diagnosed at late metastatic stages when survival is short. Outcomes could be improved if non-invasive methods could detect early stages of the disease and guide treatment decisions. Recent studies indicate this may be possible with application of digital pathology imaging, screening of CA 19-9 with additional markers, and detecting circulating tumor material in early-stage PC patients.