Unveiling the TME in Pancreatic Cancer | Andressa Dias Costa, MD | Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

Macrophages are one of the most common cell types in pancreatic cancer, but frustratingly for researchers and clinicians, measuring their overall density has shown little prognostic value. As a result, some pioneering scientists are turning to spatially resolved tissue analysis - which goes beyond simple cell density measurements to further describing the complex organization and relationship of cell populations - for possible solutions. Recent studies have indeed found that the spatial organization of different types of macrophages (M1 and M2) in the tumor microenvironment (TME) correlates with prognosis, and that has prompted researchers to profile additional immune components of the TME too. In this video, Andressa Dias Costa discusses work from the Wolpin/Nowak Lab at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to identify targetable pathways that regulate the pancreatic cancer microenvironment, and how tumor landscape studies with strong clinical annotation can drive therapeutic discovery by informing clinical trial design.
0:31 Challenges in treating pancreatic cancer
3:58 A tissue-based approach to investigate pancreatic cancer
7:08 Profiling the pancreatic cancer microenvironment through landscape studies
12:43 Studying the effects of neoadjuvant therapy on cell populations and organization
16:15 What signals regulate macrophage spatial organization?
19:00 Correlative clinical studies: Vitamin D signaling
24:50 Summary