The Effects of Ethanol on the Pancreatic Cell Line Transcriptomes

Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a highly aggressive cancer that develops from cells in the pancreas. Currently, PDAC has a 5-year survival rate of only 10% and it makes up about 7% of all cancer deaths (1). Certain risk factors are associated with PDAC development, including family history of cancer, obesity, diabetes, pancreatitis, alcohol consumption, and smoking. While several studies have assessed alcohol consumption and its contribution to PDAC development, there is conflicting evidence to whether or not alcohol actually promotes PDAC. Work from our lab indicates that specific subtypes of pancreatic cancer are associated with a patient’s drinking status, which may influence treatment strategies and patient outcomes (2). This raises the question; How does alcohol affect cancerous and pre-cancerous pancreatic cells? In this study, we performed RNA-Sequencing on ethanol treated pancreatic cells in different stages of cancer progression may provide insight to the effects of ethanol on the etiology of this disease. We analyzed the protein coding genes that were differentially expressed between non-treated and ethanol treated cells and performed functional analysis to better understand the impact of ethanol on the biological processes in pancreatic cells.https://digitalcommons.unmc.edu/surp2020/1013/thumbnail.jp