Full Text

Turn on search term navigation

© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) play a major role in the progression and drug resistance of pancreatic cancer. Recent studies suggest that CAFs exhibit functional heterogeneity and distinct transcriptomic signatures in pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic fibroblasts also form an integral component in pancreatic diseases such as chronic pancreatitis named disease-associated fibroblasts (DAFs). However, intra-tumoral heterogeneity of CAFs in pancreatic cancer patients and their pivotal role in cancer-related mechanisms have not been fully elucidated. Further, it has not been elucidated whether CAF subtypes identified in pancreatic cancer also exist in chronic pancreatitis. In this study, we used primary isolated fibroblasts from pancreatic cancer and chronic pancreatitis patients using the outgrowth method. Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) was performed, and bioinformatics analysis identified highly variable genes, including factors associated with overall survival of pancreatic cancer patients. The majority of highly variable genes are involved in the cell cycle. Instead of previously classified myofibroblastic (myCAFs), inflammatory (iCAFs), and antigen-presenting (ap) CAFs, we identified a myCAFs-like subtype in all cases. Most interestingly, after cell cycle regression, we observed 135 highly variable genes commonly identified in chronic pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer patients. This study is the first to conduct scRNAseq and bioinformatics analyses to compare CAFs/DAFs from both chronic pancreatitis and pancreatic cancer patients. Further studies are required to select and identify stromal factors in DAFs from chronic pancreatitis cases, which are commonly expressed also in CAFs potentially contributing to pancreatic cancer development.

Details

Title
Single Cell Analysis of Cultivated Fibroblasts from Chronic Pancreatitis and Pancreatic Cancer Patients
Author
Sunami, Yoshiaki 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Chen, Yijun 1 ; Trojanowicz, Bogusz 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Sommerer, Matthias 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Hämmerle, Monika 2   VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Eils, Roland 3 ; Kleeff, Jörg 1   VIAFID ORCID Logo 

 Department of Visceral, Vascular and Endocrine Surgery, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, University Medical Center Halle, 06120 Halle, Germany 
 Institute of Pathology, Section for Experimental Pathology, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg, University Medical Center Halle, 06120 Halle, Germany 
 Center for Digital Health, Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) and Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, 10117 Berlin, Germany; Health Data Science Unit, Heidelberg University Hospital and BioQuant, 69120 Heidelberg, Germany 
First page
2583
Publication year
2022
Publication date
2022
Publisher
MDPI AG
e-ISSN
20734409
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2706126587
Copyright
© 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.