Updates in Molecular Profiling of Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma.

Outcomes from pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) remain poor and better methods of prognostication and therapeutic approaches are needed. Recent advances in cancer genomics have led to the development of molecular subtypes of PDAC associated with clinical outcomes. Current evidence also suggests that the subtypes have differential response to first-line chemotherapy regimens.

Estimation of tumor cell total mRNA expression in 15 cancer types predicts disease progression.

Single-cell RNA sequencing studies have suggested that total mRNA content correlates with tumor phenotypes. Technical and analytical challenges, however, have so far impeded at-scale pan-cancer examination of total mRNA content. Here we present a method to quantify tumor-specific total mRNA expression (TmS) from bulk sequencing data, taking into account tumor transcript proportion, purity and ploidy, which are estimated through transcriptomic/genomic deconvolution.