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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Endocrinol.

Sec. Cancer Endocrinology

Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fendo.2025.1625906

Insulin-like peptide 3 (INSL3) is not a biomarker for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

Provisionally accepted
  • 1School of Biosciences, University of Nottingham, Sutton Bonington, United Kingdom
  • 2Department of Surgery, University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH), Campus Lübeck,, Luebeck, Germany
  • 3First Department of Medicine, University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein (UKSH), Campus Lübeck, Luebeck, Germany
  • 4University of Nottingham, Nottingham, United Kingdom

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Pancreatic ductal carcinoma (PDAC) is a rapid-growing cancer with very poor prognosis. It is therefore important to develop novel specific biomarkers to identify such cancers as early as possible. In a recent article published in Nature Cell Biology, Yeom and colleagues postulated that circulating insulin-like peptide 3 (INSL3) might serve as such a biomarker. Experiments were first conducted in Drosophila to show that the Dilp8/Lgr3 system regulated the fly equivalent of cachexia. This was then translated to the human to imply the involvement of the INSL3/RXFP2 system in PDAC-associated cachexia and that circulating INSL3 might serve as an early PDAC biomarker. We have now analysed blood and tumor tissue from PDAC patients using a well-validated and recognized INSL3 immunoassay and specific anti-human INSL3 antibodies and find no evidence to support these claims. We consider that this is largely due to Yeom and colleagues using a poorly validated immunoassay and antibodies for INSL3. Unfortunately, therefore this peptide is not suitable to be considered as a PDAC biomarker.

Keywords: PDAC, INSL3, Immunoassay, biomarker, Pancreatic Cancer

Received: 09 May 2025; Accepted: 04 Aug 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 Anand-Ivell, Yang, Braun, Ungefroren and Ivell. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Richard Ivell, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, 18196, United Kingdom

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