Lipidomics-based identification of pancreatic cancer patients

A method for screening for pancreatic cancer in a patient, the method comprising

• obtaining or having obtained a plasma sample from the patient, and
• performing or having performed an assay on the plasma sample to identify whether the patient has pancreatic cancer;
• wherein the patient is identified as having pancreatic cancer if an assay of phospholipids having been obtained from the plasma sample from the patient determined the ratio of sphingomyelin (SM) 18:1/18:0/SM18:1/14:0 obtained from the plasma of the patient is elevated compared to the level from a control group of subjects without pancreatic cancer;
• wherein the phospholipids extracted from the plasma sample of the patient were analyzed using HPLC-mass spectrometry;
• and
• wherein the phospholipids were normalized by a process comprising one or more of normalizing peak areas to internal standards, where phospholipid species were normalized to 1,2-dipalmitoyl-sn-glycero-3-phospho-N-methylethanolamine (PME), and lysophosphatidylethanolamine (LPE) and lysophosphatidylcholine (LPC) species were normalized to LPE (17:1) and LPC (17:1), respectively;
• individual phospholipid species were normalized to the total content of the class of phospholipids;
• and
• peak ratios were obtained by comparing phospholipids.