Expression data from human pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas by stroma types

Pancreatic cancer is characterized by abundant desmoplastic stroma. Despite numerous theoretical and experimental efforts, therapeutic approaches targeting pancreatic cancer stroma have been largely unsuccessful, highlighting the need for more comprehensive assessment of inter- and intratumoral stromal heterogeneity in a large series of clinical tumors. Quantitative computation of FAP-dominant fibroblasts, ACTA2-dominant fibroblasts, and intratumoral collagen in whole-tissue sections from 215 treatment-naïve pancreatic cancers allowed us to identify three distinct stroma types (FAP-dominant fibroblast-rich stroma [F-stroma], ACTA2-dominant fibroblast-rich stroma [A-stroma], and collgen-rich stroma [C-stroma]), which were differentially associated with patient outcomes, molecular characteristics and the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. We explored differentially expressed genes between three distinct stroma types (F-stroma, A-stroma, and C-stroma) using frozen samples from 20 patients with pancreatic cancer. Frozen specimens from 20 PDAC patients were obtained from the biobank of Keio University School of Medicine (Tokyo, Japan). These frozen tissues were sampled from surgical specimens under the supervision of pathologists and were stored at –80°C.