Publications by authors named "R Menjivar"
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a drug resistant and lethal cancer. Identification of the genes that consistently show altered expression across patients' cohorts can expose effective therapeutic targets and strategies. To identify such genes, we separately analyzed five human PDAC microarray datasets.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPancreatic cancer is characterized by an extensive fibroinflammatory microenvironment. During carcinogenesis, normal stromal cells are converted to cytokine-high cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAF). The mechanisms underlying this conversion, including the regulation and function of fibroblast-derived cytokines, are poorly understood.
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- Tumor progression leads to fibrosis, which involves excessive buildup of extracellular matrix and reduces immune cell infiltration, particularly affecting CD8 T cells.
- Tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) adapt to the stiff fibrotic environment by promoting collagen production through signaling from transforming growth factor-β.
- This collagen production by TAMs creates a challenging metabolic environment that limits the effectiveness of CD8 T cells, hindering their ability to mount strong antitumor responses in breast cancer patients.
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) continues to have a dismal prognosis. The poor survival of patients with PDA has been attributed to a high rate of early metastasis and low efficacy of current therapies, which partly result from its complex immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. Previous studies from our group and others have shown that tumor-associated macrophages (TAM) are instrumental in maintaining immunosuppression in PDA.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNutrient stress in the tumor microenvironment requires cancer cells to adopt adaptive metabolic programs for survival and proliferation. Therefore, knowledge of microenvironmental nutrient levels and how cancer cells cope with such nutrition is critical to understand the metabolism underpinning cancer cell biology. Previously, we performed quantitative metabolomics of the interstitial fluid (the local perfusate) of murine pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) tumors to comprehensively characterize nutrient availability in the microenvironment of these tumors.
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