Sensory nerves physically feed into the food chain of tumour cells and induce metabolic plasticity and transcriptional reprogramming to fuel human pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a lethal cancer associated with sprouting of peripheral nerves, pain and unusual invasion of tumour cells into nerves, which are linked with poor clinical prognosis. However, the underlying ultrastructural basis remains to be investigated and particularly how sensory nerves in turn modify PDAC cells is largely unknown.