Interest of studying the saliva metabolome, transcriptome and microbiome in screening for pancreatic cancer.

Introduction: Pancreatic cancer is a public health problem because its mortality rate is close to its incidence rate. If it were possible to detect this cancer before the onset of symptoms, 5-year survival could reach 75%. Numerous studies have attempted to accelerate the diagnosis to improve survival. Saliva presents interesting characteristics as a fluid for screening and diagnosis. Its many components provide a promising source of constitutive biomarkers with a specific signature of the disease. The aim of this work was to determine the interest of studying the metabolome, the transcriptome and the microbiome of saliva in screening for pancreatic cancer.

Materials And Methods: A review of the literature was conducted using the PubMed search engine. The last search was conducted in July 2017.

Results: Nine references, all original studies, published between 2010 and 2017 were included.

Discussion: Different combinations of metabolites, RNA and bacteria were found. Analysis of the saliva transcriptome and metabolome seems to be the most promising avenue.

Conclusion: The identification of an early salivary signature of pancreatic cancer is still in its infancy and the results obtained here must be confirmed in larger prospective multicentre studies.