Pancreatic ductal
adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the most representative form of
pancreatic cancers. PDAC solid tumours are constituted of heterogeneous populations of cells including cancer stem cells (CSCs), differentiated
cancer cells, desmoplastic stroma and immune cells. The identification and consequent isolation of pancreatic CSCs facilitated the generation of genetically engineered murine models. Nonetheless, the current models may not be representative for the spontaneous tumour occurrence. In the present study, we show the generation of a novel pancreatic iPSC-converted cancer stem cell lines (CSCcm) as a cutting-edge model for the study of PDAC. The CSCcm lines were achieved only by the influence of
pancreatic cancer cell lines
conditioned medium and were not subjected to any genetic manipulation. The xenografts tumours from CSCcm lines displayed histopathological features of ADM, PanIN and PDAC lesions. Further molecular characterization from
RNA-sequencing analysis highlighted primary culture cell lines (1st CSCcm) as potential candidates to represent the pancreatic CSCs and indicated the establishment of the
pancreatic cancer molecular pattern in their subsequent progenies 2nd CSCcm and 3rd CSCcm. In addition, preliminary
RNA-seq SNPs analysis showed that the distinct CSCcm lines did not harbour single point mutations for the oncogene Kras
codon 12 or 13. Therefore, PDAC-CSCcm model may provide new insights about the actual occurrence of the
pancreatic cancer leading to develop different approaches to target CSCs and abrogate the progression of this fatidic disease.