Transcriptional profiling of metastatic tumor cells in liver of a mouse pancreatic cancer model

Cancer patients presenting with surgically resectable disease often harbor occult metastases, a potential source of relapse that is targetable only through systemic therapy. Studies of this occult fraction have been limited by a lack of tools with which to isolate cells based on spatial grounds. We developed a photoconversion-based isolation technique allowing efficient recovery of cell clusters of any size including solitary disseminated tumor cells (DTCs), which are largely inaccessible otherwise. In a mouse pancreatic cancer model, transcriptional profiling of spontaneously arising DTCs revealed considerable heterogeneity, functionally reduced propensity to proliferate and enrichment for inflammatory-response phenotype associated with NF-?B signaling. Overall design: Cel-seq2 was utlized as transcriptional profiling strategy to compare the gene expression programs between DTCs and macrometastatic tumor cells. DTCs and macropmetastatic tumor cells were sorted from liver in an orthotopically implantation based mouse pancreatic cancer model.