Abstract C039: Investigating ER stress responses in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma under lipid imbalance
Authors: Jiang Yanqing (Christine) , Han Xu , Tobias John , Poltorack Carson , Wang Mai , Burgess-Jones Pamela , Coffey Nathan , Keith Brian , Simon Celeste 
Published: September 2024

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is the third leading cause of cancer-related death, with a five-year survival rate of 12%. Dense desmoplasia results in poor intratumoral perfusion and elevated interstitial fluid pressure, creating regions with severe oxygen and nutrient deprivation. One consequence is a deficiency in unsaturated fatty acids (uFAs), as the de novo synthesis of uFAs requires oxygen. Our results indicate that PDAC cells experience endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress and activate subsequent ER stress responses under uFA- limited conditions in vitro. ER stress responses are governed by three major stress sensors: inositol-requiring enzyme 1α (IRE1α), PKR-like ER kinase (PERK), and activating transcription factor 6 (ATF6). When IRE1α is activated, XBP1 mRNA is spliced, resulting in an activated transcription factor, XBP1s, which modulates lipid metabolism. XBP1s is upregulated in PDAC compared to PanIN and normal tissue in murine and human samples. PDAC cells have reduced viability under uFA-limited conditions. Moreover, ER stress is activated under uFA deficiency, and the stress response is diminished upon rescue by monounsaturated oleic acids. To study the role of ER stress responses, we genetically depleted PERK, ATF6, or XBP1 in PDAC cells. The depletion of these pathways rescued PDAC cell viability. Interestingly, B-I09, an inhibitor of XBP1 splicing, led to a mild tumor reduction in vivo. We have found that "basal-like" patient tumors are significantly enriched in the ER stress response pathways based on bulk patient RNA-seq datasets. Therefore, we hypothesize that the two PDAC subtypes “basal” and “classical” might have different responses or reliance on the ER stress pathways. We have created isogenic subtype models to represent basal and classical subtypes by modulating epithelial to mesenchymal (EMT) factors and deltaNP63. Signaling studies suggest that there are no differences between the subtypes’ response to uFA-limited conditions. We are currently assessing the role of XBP1s and IRE1α in vivo by implanting the gene-edited cells into subcutaneous and orthotopic tumor models. Furthermore, we are pursuing spatial mass spectrometry to study the lipid environment in PDAC tumors and investigate whether lipid imbalance is the main cause of ER stress activation in the tumor microenvironment (TME). Overall, our studies show that ER stress response is upregulated in PDAC tumors, and stress response promotes cell death under in vitro TME-like conditions. Subtype features such as EMT and deltaNP63 do not alter PDAC cells’ ER stress responses, and had minimal impact on their stress response reliance.

Citation Format: Yanqing (Christine) Jiang, Xu Han, John Tobias, Carson Poltorack, Mai Wang, Pamela Burgess-Jones, Nathan Coffey, Brian Keith, Celeste Simon. Investigating ER stress responses in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma under lipid imbalance [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference in Cancer Research: Advances in Pancreatic Cancer Research; 2024 Sep 15-18; Boston, MA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(17 Suppl_2):Abstract nr C039.