Molecular Cancer (Jul 2024)

Unbiasedly decoding the tumor microenvironment with single-cell multiomics analysis in pancreatic cancer

  • Yifan Fu,
  • Jinxin Tao,
  • Tao Liu,
  • Yueze Liu,
  • Jiangdong Qiu,
  • Dan Su,
  • Ruobing Wang,
  • Wenhao Luo,
  • Zhe Cao,
  • Guihu Weng,
  • Taiping Zhang,
  • Yupei Zhao

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s12943-024-02050-7
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 23, no. 1
pp. 1 – 22

Abstract

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Abstract Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a highly aggressive malignancy with a poor prognosis and limited therapeutic options. Research on the tumor microenvironment (TME) of PDAC has propelled the development of immunotherapeutic and targeted therapeutic strategies with a promising future. The emergence of single-cell sequencing and mass spectrometry technologies, coupled with spatial omics, has collectively revealed the heterogeneity of the TME from a multiomics perspective, outlined the development trajectories of cell lineages, and revealed important functions of previously underrated myeloid cells and tumor stroma cells. Concurrently, these findings necessitated more refined annotations of biological functions at the cell cluster or single-cell level. Precise identification of all cell clusters is urgently needed to determine whether they have been investigated adequately and to identify target cell clusters with antitumor potential, design compatible treatment strategies, and determine treatment resistance. Here, we summarize recent research on the PDAC TME at the single-cell multiomics level, with an unbiased focus on the functions and potential classification bases of every cellular component within the TME, and look forward to the prospects of integrating single-cell multiomics data and retrospectively reusing bulk sequencing data, hoping to provide new insights into the PDAC TME.

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