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Omics · study · 2026

Mitophagy Competent Cancer Associated Fibroblasts fuel Chemoresistance by Rewiring Pyrimidine Metabolism in Pancreatic Cancer [Cut & Tag]

Listed in NCBI GEO

Pancreatic cancer remains one of the deadliest malignancies, with gemcitabine-based chemotherapy as the mainstay treatment for most patients, yet resistance emerges almost universally.

Description

A defining feature of pancreatic cancer is its dense, fibroblast-rich stroma, where heterogeneous cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs) actively shape tumor biology and therapeutic response. Here, we elucidated a stromal–metabolic mechanism through which chemoresistant CAFs confer gemcitabine resistance.

We identified a subset of mitophagy-competent CAFs that enhanced pancreatic cancer gemcitabine resistance. The EMT transcription factor ZEB1 acts as a master regulator of this CAF-driven chemoresistance program, being upregulated and epigenetically activated via SETD1A-mediated H3K4 methylation in gemcitabine-resistant CAFs. ZEB1 promotes BNIP3-mediated mitophagy in CAFs, leading to increased nucleotides secretion, which competitively inhibited gemcitabine incorporation into cancer cells while simultaneously supplying pyrimidine metabolism substrates for pyrimidine metabolism.

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Concurrently, ZEB1 transcriptionally activated CXCL8, engaging the CXCR1/2–MEK/ERK pathway in tumor cells and further augmenting pyrimidine metabolism via the RRM1/E2F1/G6PD axis, collectively diminishing gemcitabine cytotoxicity. Notably, combined inhibition of CXCR1/2 or G6PD with gemcitabine robustly suppressed tumor growth and restored chemosensitivity both in vitro and in vivo. These findings uncover a key stromal–metabolic axis in pancreatic cancer, linking mitophagy CAF activity to metabolic remodeling in tumor cells, and identifying ZEB1 and its downstream network as actionable targets to overcome chemoresistance.

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Life Sciences
Inferred from text
Cancer 75%
Provenance · 1 source records, 8 field assertions
SourceKeyLast seenRaw
NCBI GEOGSE33068211 d agoJSON v1
FieldAssertionExtractorEvidence
access_levelsource · NCBI GEOconnector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0
concepts[disease].local:disease:cancerenrichment · NCBI GEOkeyword-concept-rules@1.0.0title+description (75%)
concepts[field].local:field:life-sciencesmapping · NCBI GEOconnector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0
concepts[method].geo_series_type:genome-binding-occupancy-profiling-by-high-throughput-sequencingsource · NCBI GEOconnector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0/gdstype
concepts[organism].NCBITaxon:9606source · NCBI GEOconnector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0/taxon
descriptionsource · NCBI GEOconnector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0/summary
publication_datesource · NCBI GEOconnector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0
titlesource · NCBI GEOconnector:ncbi_geo@1.0.0/title