Quasimesenchymal phenotype predicts systemic metastasis in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma

Metastasis following surgical resection is a leading cause of mortality in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Epithelial-mesenchymal transition is thought to play an important role in metastasis, although its clinical relevance in metastasis remains uncertain. We evaluated a panel of RNA in-situ hybridization probes for epithelial-mesenchymal transition-related genes expressed in circulating tumor cells. We assessed the predictive value of this panel for metastasis in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma and, to determine if the phenotype is generalizable between cancers, in colonic adenocarcinoma. One hundred fifty-eight pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas and 205 colonic adenocarcinomas were classified as epithelial or quasimesenchymal phenotype using dual colorimetric RNA-in-situ hybridization. SMAD4 expression on pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas was assessed by immunohistochemistry. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas with quasimesenchymal phenotype had a significantly shorter disease-specific survival (P = 0.031) and metastasis-free survival (P = 0.0001) than those with an epithelial phenotype. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas with SMAD4 loss also had lower disease-specific survival (P = 0.041) and metastasis-free survival (P = 0.001) than those with intact SMAD4. However, the quasimesenchymal phenotype proved a more robust predictor of metastases-area under the curve for quasimesenchymal = 0.8; SMAD4 = 0.6. The quasimesenchymal phenotype also predicted metastasis-free survival (P = 0.004) in colonic adenocarcinoma. Epithelial-mesenchymal transition defined two phenotypes with distinct metastatic capabilities-epithelial phenotype tumors with predominantly organ-confined disease and quasimesenchymal phenotype with high risk of metastatic disease in two epithelial malignancies. Collectively, this work validates the relevance of epithelial-mesenchymal transition in human gastrointestinal tumors.