Pancreatic cancer patients may benefit from future precision treatments as a new study shows how some tumors may potentially be more susceptible to macrophage-based therapies.
The study which is published in Nature Communications was led by Associate Professor Shivan Sivakumar from the University of Birmingham and Associate Professor Rachael Bashford-Rogers at the University of Oxford and provides the most detailed immune map for pancreatic cancer. The findings suggest that some tumor cells are more likely to be infiltrated by T cell treatments, while others had myeloid cell infiltration. This means that cells such as macrophages could be suitable for future immunotherapeutic treatments in some cases.
Using cells from twelve patients, the research team created a single cell map of tumor infiltrating immune cells and peripheral immune cells, coupled with gene expression, single cell TCR and BCR sequencing and identifying proteins expressed on these cells. The team then verified their findings using two other large publicly available pancreatic cancer datasets.
Dr. Shivan Sivakumar, Associate Professor of Oncology from the University of Birmingham and lead author of the study said:
“Pancreatic cancer is a tumor that does not respond to existing immunotherapies (checkpoint inhibitors). A basis for this is that there is not the same immunogenic reaction to the tumor that exists in other cancers. We therefore mapped out how the immune system is constructed in pancreatic cancer patients. This has helped us understand with a high degree of confidence what immune cells are present in pancreatic cancer and let us