α-Smooth Muscle Actin Expressing Stroma Promotes an Aggressive Tumor Biology in Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Objectives: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is often characterized by a prominent desmoplastic stroma that is induced partially by α-smooth muscle actin (SMA)-expressing activated pancreatic stellate cells (PSCs). This study aimed to investigate the significance of α-SMA expression in PDAC and the correlation between α-SMA mRNA levels and the patient prognosis. Methods: We obtained formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue samples from 109 patients with PDAC, who underwent pancreatectomy at our institution from 1992 to 2007. We measured α-SMA mRNA levels by quantitative real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and investigated the association of α-SMA mRNA expression with clinicopathologic parameters and survival time. We also assessed the influence of activated PSCs on malignant behaviors of pancreatic cancer cells using in vitro experiments. Results: α-SMA immunoreactivity was detected exclusively in the stroma of PDAC. The group with high α-SMA expression showed a significantly shorter survival, as shown by univariate analysis (P = 0.005) and multivariate analysis (P < 0.0001). α-SMA-expressing activated PSCs enhanced the invasiveness, proliferation, and colony formation of pancreatic cancer cells. Conclusions: Quantitative analysis of α-SMA mRNA expression using formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue samples was useful to predict the prognosis of patients with PDAC. Activated PSCs may regulate the malignant behavior of pancreatic cancer cells. Abbreviations: PDAC - pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, PSCs - pancreatic stellate cells, α-SMA - α-smooth muscle actin, FFPE - formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded, qRT-PCR - quantitative real-time reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, ECM - extracellular matrix, GFP - green fluorescent protein, CM - conditioned media, UICC - Union Internationale Contre le Cancer and the American Joint Committee on Cancer, COL1 - collagen type I, AC - adjuvant chemotherapy
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".