Sendai virus is robust and consistent in delivering genes into human pancreatic cancer cells.
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is highly intratumorally heterogeneous and has several subtypes. Effective gene delivery to all PDAC cells is essential for modulating gene expression and identifying potential gene-based therapeutic targets in PDAC. Most current gene delivery systems for pancreatic cells are optimized for islet or acinar cells. Lentiviral vectors are the current main gene delivery vectors for PDAC, but their transduction efficiencies vary depending on pancreatic cell type, and are especially poor for the classical subtype of PDAC cells from both primary tumors and cell lines. Herein, we systemically compare transduction efficiencies of glycoprotein G of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV-G)-pseudotyped lentiviral and Sendai viral vectors in human normal pancreatic ductal and PDAC cells. We find that the Sendai viral vector gives the most robust gene delivery efficiency regardless of PDAC cell type. Therefore, we propose using Sendai viral vectors for transducing ectopic genes into PDAC cells. Overall design: To compare transduction efficiency of lentiviral and Sendai virus vectors in different sybtypes of human pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) primary cell culture and PDAC cell lines we established primary cell cultures with patient-derived xenograft (PDX) PDAC (ST-7599, ST-14490  and ST-7270). To determine subtypes of  established  primary PDAC cell cultures (ST-7599, ST-14490, and ST-7270)  and PDAC cell lines (Panc-1, CFPAC-1) based on  previosly published PDAC subtypes gene expression signatures we conducted RNA-Seq and performed hierarchical and consensus clustering with normalized gene expression.