Genome Med: Single-cell RNA sequencing techniques that can reveal the properties of individual cells in pancreatic tumors are expected to help develop individual pancreatic cancer therapies.

11, 2020 // -- In a recent study published in the international journal Genem Medicine, scientists from the American Academy of Translational Genomics and others detailed the characteristics of individual cells that make up the microenvironment of pancreatic cancer, which may hopefully help develop new therapies to treat this invasive and difficult-to-treat type of cancer.
Photo Source: In the CC0 Public Domain article, researchers used a technique called single-cell sequencing to analyze cells in pancreatic tumors, and eventually identified a variety of cells in the pancreatic tumor interstitial, a special substance that surrounds the tumor to help it evade attacks by the host body's immune system.
Previously, researchers used single-cell transcription histology techniques to study the cellular composition of primary tumor tissue in pancreatic catheter adenocarcinoma, while in this study, researchers used this technique to analyze single cells of living tissue from primary tumor site and metastatic tissue. Dr. Haiyong Han, an
researcher, said single-cell transcriptomic analysis could provide important clinical insights into single-cell subgroups, as well as new clues to the development of targeted therapies and new immunotherapy, understanding the diversity and complexity of pancreatic catheterized adenocarcinoma, as well as the characteristics of a single tumor intermediate chamber, or helping scientists identify specific interventions and develop new treatments and interventions for patients with malignant cancer.
In this study, the researchers identified different cell types and cell subtypes, including tumor cells, epithelocytes, cancer-related fibroblasts, and immune cells, and the level of expression of multiple genes in a single cell population was directly related to the patient's clinical prognosis;
Pancreatic cancer is a malignant type with a high fatality rate and is the third leading cause of cancer death in the United States, after lung and colorectal cancer, with a five-year survival rate of only about 10 percent in 2020, although this is a slight improvement from the dismal 6 percent in 2014.
Next, researchers plan to use more advanced single-cell spatial transcriptomic analysis techniques to uncover cellular associations associated with patient survival rates, to use the technique more deeply and widely, or to help find new agents for effective treatment of pancreatic cancer;
() Original source: Wei Lin, Pawan Noel, Erkut H. Borazanci, et al. Single-cell transcriptome analysis of t tumor and stromal compartments of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma primary tumors and metastatic lesions, Genome Medicine (2020). DOI: 10.1186/s13073-020-00776-9.