Spatial Organization of Immune Cells in the Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) Tumor Microenvironment

It is difficult to develop successful treatments for PDAC; even with curative resection, most patients die from early occult metastases. Immune checkpoint therapy has so far been unsuccessful at improving patient outcomes. Prior studies identified the presence of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) in primary PDAC tumors as having prognostic significance in the PDAC adjuvant setting. The phase 3 APACT trial evaluated the use of adjuvant nab-paclitaxel plus gemcitabine vs. gemcitabine in 866 patients with PDAC who had undergone primary tumor resection, with the primary endpoint of disease-free survival evaluated by independent review. We extended studies of the tumor microenvironment of PDAC to a large set of resected APACT primary tumors in an effort to further refine features of tumor or immune infiltrate that influence disease progression and to determine if chemotherapy regimen–specific predictive signatures are identifiable. In this webinar, we will describe the methods and preliminary analytics obtained from this study which provide an unprecedented opportunity for exploratory analysis and discovery of immune, molecular, and genetic biomarkers for PDAC patient stratification.