Tehran University Medical Journal

Background: Members of the tumor necrosis factor (TNF) superfamily of ligands and their receptors (TNFR) are critical regulators of the adaptive immune system. A proliferation inducing ligand (APRIL) is a member of tumor necrosis factor superfamily. APRIL was identified via database mining in 1998 by Hahne, et al. APRIL allows tumor cells to proliferate at a reasonable rate even in low serum. APRIL is abundantly expressed in many tumor cells and tumor tissues. Increasing level of APRIL expression related to replacement of -Arg-Lys-Arg-Arg- motif by -Ala-Lys-Arg-Ala- between amino acids 101-104 and thus abrogated APRIL processing. Previous studies have shown a correlation between APRIL expression with some autoimmune disease, breast cancer, stomach cancer, esophagus cancer and colorectal cancer. Herein, we explore correlation between serum APRIL with pancreatic cancer.

Methods: Our study is performed in digestive disease research institute (DDRI) of the Shariati Hospital in Tehran City and affiliated Hospital of Tehran University of Medical Sciences. In this study, concentrations of serum APRIL in sera (30 pancreatic cancer patients and 30 healthy controls) from November 2011 to November 2013 collected and level of a proliferation inducing ligand measured by ELISA technique. In this study used from SPSS software, version 22 (IBM SPSS, Armonk, NY, USA) to perform statistical data analysis.

Results: The case group measurement results compared with control groups results according to some characteristics such as age, smoking and, diabetes. ELISA analysis of APRIL measurements show that mean serum APRIL level of pancreatic cancer patients (7 ng/ml) was significantly higher than control group (5 ng/ml). The p-value of this study was 0.003.

Conclusion: Our results indicate that serum APRIL, as a potential biomarker, has a positive diagnosis and prognosis value for pancreatic cancer.