Abstract A068: Proteomic analysis of keratin 17 positive cells from laser-capture microdissected pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma
Authors: Bai Ji Dong K. , Haley John D. , Marchenko Natalia , Escobar-Hoyos Luisa F. , Shroyer Kenneth R. 
Published: January 2024

Introduction. Although patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) have one of the lowest survival of all carcinomas, there is considerable variation in survival and disease progression, even when accounting for factors such as age and pathologic stage. Our group identified keratin 17 (K17) as a negative prognostic and predictive biomarker in PDAC. Patients with high K17 expression in their tumors have shorter overall survival as well as decreased response to chemotherapeutic agents, including gemcitabine. K17 has also emerged as an established biomarker of the basal molecular subtype of PDAC. In this study, we aim to identify proteins which correlate, directly or indirectly, with K17 expression via a combined approach using immunohistochemistry (IHC) followed by laser capture microdissection (LCM) and mass spectrometry. Methods. We selected 5 PDAC cases of low K17 expression and 5 PDAC cases of high K17 expression from the archival collections from the Stony Brook Cancer Center Biobank. A modified indirect immunoperoxidase approach was performed on sections mounted on LCM-compatible membrane slides. Carcinoma cells that were either K17 positive or negative by IHC were precisely dissected using LMD7 microscope (Leica) from 10-µM thick sections, followed by a modified tissue digestion and protein extraction protocol. Collision-induced fragment mass information and peptide abundance values were obtained by a liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Spectral cutoffs were analyzed at both &lt;5% and 1% false discovery rates. The human UniProt dataset was used for data alignment. Results. Mass spectrometry yielded over 1600 detected proteins with approximately 50 of which correlated strongly with K17 expression. Our preliminary results show that keratin 5, a known marker of basal-like PDAC, is positively correlated with keratin 17. Genes whose increased expression contribute to the Moffitt classification of basal molecular subtype of PDAC, such as S100A2, keratin 6A and keratin 7, also showed positive correlation with K17 in our study. The remainder of proteins associated with K17 expression include those involved with cell adhesion, cell-extracellular matrix interaction and smooth muscle contraction pathways, with specific types and classes being identified, pending in-depth analysis. Proteins with inverse relationship to K17 expression included those involved in intracellular organelle trafficking and apoptosis pathways. Conclusion. Our findings demonstrate the utility of mass spectrometry-based spatial proteomic analysis of microdissected cell populations from formalin-fixed, paraffin embedded samples. These methods have the potential to uncover complementary biomarkers to K17 that could enhance prognostic accuracy or serve as therapeutic targets and provide mechanistic insight into the mechanisms through which K17 drives tumor aggression.

Citation Format: Ji Dong K. Bai, John D. Haley, Natalia Marchenko, Luisa F. Escobar-Hoyos, Kenneth R. Shroyer. Proteomic analysis of keratin 17 positive cells from laser-capture microdissected pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference in Cancer Research: Pancreatic Cancer; 2023 Sep 27-30; Boston, Massachusetts. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(2 Suppl):Abstract nr A068.