Single cell transcriptomic analyses implicate an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment in pancreatic cancer liver metastasis

Abstract Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a highly metastatic disease refractory to all targeted and immune therapies. However, our understanding of PDAC microenvironment especially the metastatic microenvironment is very limited partly due to the inaccessibility to metastatic tumor tissues. Here, we present the single-cell transcriptomic landscape of synchronously resected PDAC primary tumors and matched liver metastases. We perform comparative analysis on both cellular composition and functional phenotype between primary and metastatic tumors. Tumor cells exhibit distinct transcriptomic profile in liver metastasis with clearly defined evolutionary routes from cancer cells in primary tumor. We also…

• NN
  National Natural Science Foundation of China

  Awards: 82072652, 21877060, 81871947, 32070656, 81802396
• GO
  Government of Jiangsu Province
• NS
  Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province

  Awards: BK20180117, ZKX18022, BK20191113, YKK17077, 201911038, 201715023
• NU
  Nanjing University
• CF
  Center for Information Technology