Epithelial to Mesenchymal Transition Contributes to Drug Resistance in Pancreatic Cancer

A better understanding of drug resistance mechanisms is required to improve outcomes in patients with pancreatic cancer. Here, we characterized patterns of sensitivity and resistance to three conventional chemotherapeutic agents with divergent mechanisms of action [gemcitabine, 5-fluorouracil (5-FU), and cisplatin] in pancreatic cancer cells. Four (L3.6pl, BxPC-3, CFPAC-1, and SU86.86) were sensitive and five (PANC-1, Hs766T, AsPC-1, MIAPaCa-2, and MPanc96) were resistant to all three agents based on GI(50) (50% growth inhibition). Gene expression profiling and unsupervised hierarchical clustering revealed that the sensitive and resistant cells formed two distinct groups and differed in expression of specific…

• AC
  American Cancer Society
• PH
  Public Health Agency of Canada