Pancreatic adenocarcinomas with mature blood vessels have better overall survival.

ABSTRACT: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is known for its hypovascularity. Bevacizumab, an anti-angiogenic drug, added to standard chemotherapy demonstrated no improvement in outcome for PDAC. Therefore, we hypothesized that increased vascularity may be associated with improved outcomes in PDAC possibly due to better delivery of tumor specific immune cells. To test this hypothesis, PDAC patients were classified into either high or low CD31 expression groups utilizing mRNA expression from RNA-sequence data in The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) pancreatic cancer cohort. High expression of CD31, which indicates presence of more vascular endothelial cells, was associated with significantly better OS (p?=?0.002). Multivariate analysis demonstrated that residual tumor (R1, 2; p?=?0.026) and CD31 low expression (p?=?0.007) were the only independent predictors that negatively impacted OS. Vascular stability as well as immune response related pathways were significantly upregulated in the CD31 high expressing tumors. Furthermore, there were higher proportions of anti-cancer immune cells infiltration, including activated memory CD4+ T cells (p?=?0.038), CD8+ T cells (p?=?0.027), gamma-delta T cells (p?

SUBMITTER: Katsuta E 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6362082 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature