Determination of copper and other trace elements in serum samples of patients with biliary tract cancers

Trace metals disorder MD in the body of cancer patient is a sociated with health problems for which treatments are poorly effective. Ia this project, we set to identify and investigate the MD in biliary tract cancers at pre-clinical and clinkal level by integrating inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) methods into analytical methodology to test the main hypothesis that MD can be used as biomarkers for disease. Objectives will be met by the development and the application of newly developed analytical methods to metal­based biomarker research in oncology at pre-clinical and clinical level. Clinical study is designed with the aim to identify serum Cu, Zn .and Fe levels and ratios, and Cu speciatioa and isotopic fractionation as a predictive biomarker of response to systemic therapy in correlation with radiological CT evaluation for response to systemic therapy and thereby confirm the feasibility of the approach proposed.