Spatial landscape of the tumor microenvironment in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma using multiplexed imaging and AI based analysis

摘要: Pancreatic tumors are highly heterogenous, often with more aggressive regions that are responsible for invasion and metastasis. These aggressive pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) cells undergo epithelial to mesenchymal transition and create subregions in the tumor that evade treatments and provide a critical support niche for continued tumor growth and metastasis. Conventional chemotherapy plus radiation, or in advanced disease chemotherapy plus targeted drug therapy can lengthen patient survival. However, even in patients with local disease, the 5-year survival rate remains at around 40%, demonstrating that there is need for improved conventional and immune therapies for all pancreatic cancer patients. In this study, dozens of biomarkers have been used to probe tumor heterogeneity in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) tissue. We rely on the published finding that hypoxia gene …