Expresion profiles of the galectin family in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

Máster de Biotecnología, curso académico 2019-2020.--Calificación Final 9,5BACKGROUND: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDA) ranks as the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths among developed countries. New insights into its pathogenesis are urgently needed, seeing that it is highly chemoresistant and immunoresistant. A major factor that contributes to these characteristics is the excessive stroma, which has emerged as a promising target. Galectins are glycan-binding proteins that function both extracellularly and intracellularly and whose expression is altered in several tumors. Few members of the galectin family have been studied in PDA, highlighting the role of Galectin1 (Gal1) and Galectin3 (Gal3), which have been reported to be overexpressed contributing to the progression of the disease. Thus, this study aims to determine the expression profiles of the galectin family members in PDA. RESULTS: Each cell line analyzed showed a unique galectin mRNA expression profile. In tumoral murine samples, overexpression of Gal1, Gal2, Gal3, Gal4 and Gal9 mRNAs was found in comparison to healthy pancreas. Meanwhile, Gal7, Gal8 and Gal12 mRNAs were not or poorly expressed in murine tumoral samples. Survival data retrieved from The Human Protein Atlas showed that patients with low mRNA expression of Gal1, Gal3, Gal4, Gal7, Gal9 and Gal10 showed increased survival compared to patients with high levels of these galectins, while patients with Gal12 high mRNA expression showed better survival. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS: Preliminary mRNA results indicate that differential expression of other galectins may happen in PDA. Moreover, survival data from public databases shows that this may be linked to prognosis of the disease and highlights a possible important role of some of the previously unexplored galectins in this pathology. Still, further research is needed to validate the obtained results at the protein level and better understand the expression profiles of galectins in PDA, which will be key to understand their roles in this pathology