Single-cell profiling to explore pancreatic cancer heterogeneity, plasticity and response to therapy

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a highly lethal cancer entity characterized by a heterogeneous genetic landscape and an immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. Recent advances in high-resolution single-cell sequencing and spatial transcriptomics technologies have enabled an in-depth characterization of both malignant and host cell types and increased our understanding of the heterogeneity and plasticity of PDAC in the steady state and under therapeutic perturbation. In this Review we outline single-cell analyses in PDAC, discuss their implications on our understanding of the disease and present future perspectives of multimodal approaches to elucidate its biology and response to therapy at the single-cell level.