Arrest-associated transcriptional programmes outweigh apoptosis-associated programmes in treatment-naive pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

In treatment-naive pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, 86.3% of informative malignant cells show a transcriptional bias toward arrest-associated programmes rather than apoptosis-associated programmes.

• Why it matters: It is unclear whether untreated PDAC primarily halts growth or promotes cell death, and this balance could shape how tumours respond to therapy.
• What they did: Using a transcriptional contrast in 52,999 malignant cells from 18 untreated patients in the Hwang atlas, the authors compared apoptosis-associated genes versus genes linked to resistance to apoptosis or cell-cycle arrest.
• The result: The arrest-side shift replicated in the Steele atlas (median 71.6% per sample, range 37.1%–90.8%), related to basal-like scores and TGM2 expression, but did not track cell-line drug sensitivity or survival in bulk tumours.

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