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International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Medicine Research

ISSN Online: 2575-7970 Downloads: 247121 Total View: 2681476
Frequency: quarterly ISSN Print: 2575-7989 CODEN: IJCEMH
Email: ijcemr@hillpublisher.com
Article Open Access http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/ijcemr.2025.01.002

De-differentiation Associated with Metastatic Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumors

Emily Gai

Crescenta Valley High School, La Crescenta, CA 91214, USA.

*Corresponding author: Emily Gai

Published: February 24,2025

Abstract

Pancreatic neuroendocrine tumors (PNETs) are rare tumors originating from hormone-producing endocrine cells in the pancreas, only accounting for 1-2% of all pancreatic cancers. The overall five-year survival rate of PNETs is more than 50%, however, once PNETs reach a distant metastatic stage, the survival rate drops sharply to about 20%. The purpose of this study is to identify genes associated with PNETs metastasis. I analyzed the RNA-Seq data from well-differentiated PNETs and compared gene expression profiles of metastatic tumors with profiles of primary PNETs. I used DEseq2 and identified 1007 genes with significant differential expression levels (absolute value of log2 fold change > 1, FDR < 0.05). Among the 325 significantly down-regulated genes, I found about 100 genes, average expression levels in meta-static tumor tissues about 1/8 of those in localized PNETs, were related to basic functions of pancreatic islet cells: hormone secretion, neural development, synapse assembly, and synapse structure/functions in metastatic tumor tissues compared to localized PNETs. Such findings revealed that metastatic PNETs cells, even well-differentiated ones, might start de-differentiation, adjusting their gene expression to adapt to a new tumor microenvironment (TME) distance from the pancreas. Such observations allow a better under-standing of the metastasis of PNETs and indicate that differentiation-inducing treatments could be an option for metastatic PNETs.

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How to cite this paper

De-differentiation Associated with Metastatic Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumors

How to cite this paper:  Emily Gai. (2025) De-differentiation Associated with Metastatic Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumors. International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Medicine Research9(1), 7-13.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.26855/ijcemr.2025.01.002