With an incidence rate of 10 cases per 100,000 people per year, cancer of the pancreas is the third most common malignancy of the gastrointestinal tract. The overall survival for patients with pancreatic cancer is very poor, with a 5-year survival of 1% to 4%. Successful therapy depends on early diagnosis. The discrimination between benign and malignancies of the pancreas and the assessment of local resectability and distant metastases of the pancreatic cancer remains challenging with different imaging modalities such as ultrasound (US), endoscopic US (EUS), multidetector row computed tomography (MDCT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and 18F-FDG positron emission tomography (PET). PDAC is characterized by a distinct and exuberant desmoplastic stroma, with stromal components outnumbering the pancreatic cancer cells. In PDAC, more than 90% of the tumour volume consists of cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAF). Fibroblast activation protein (FAP) is highly and selectively expressed in CAFs but is weakly expressed or not detected in normal tissues. The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of FAPI-PET/CT on the clinical management of patients with suspected pancreatic cancer.
Fibroblast activation protein (FAP) is overexpressed in cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), which constitutes a major proportion of cells within the tumor microenvironment, especially in primary pancreatic ductal carcinoma (PDAC). In this prospective study, we aimed to evaluate the performance and value of 68Ga-FAPI-04 PET/CT in the patients with PDAC.