Two of the discriminative metabolite markers identified here, N-palmitoyl glutamic acid and hexanoylcarnitine (Figs. 3, 5b), are fatty acid conjugates with an amino acid and carnitine, respectively. N-acyl amino acids were only recently discovered as a novel group of compounds and little is known about their function (Hanus et al. 2014). However, a recent study in mice showed that certain N-acyl amino acids regulate cell metabolism through mitochondrial uncoupling (Long et al. 2016). Acylcarnitines in turn are vital for the transport of fatty acids into the mitochondrial matrix (Indiveri et al. 2011). Short-chain acylcarnitines including hexanoylcarnitine were previously found increased in serum in type 2 diabetes compared to normal glucose tolerance (Mai et al. 2013); both CP and PDAC may cause diabetes (Pinho et al. 2014).