Progress in research on the interaction between pancreatic stellate cells and tumor cells

Abstract

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most common digestive tract malignant tumors with poor prognosis and low rate of the surgical resection, which has been a major difficulty in clinical surgeons. In recent years, the study founds that the interaction relations activated pancreatic stellate cell in the pancreas tumor microenvironment and cancer cells plays a very important role in the development of tumor. The cancer cells promote the activation of pancreatic stellate cells, secretion, and metastasis, at the same time, the pancreatic stellate cells can promote the proliferation, invasion, metastasis of cancer cells, and has a dual function of promotion and suppression the formation of new blood vessels around the tumor and immune suppression.Therefore, deeply study of the PSC will help us figure out the regulation of tumor development and initiate a new way for treatment of pancreas tumor at the cell and molecular level. Key words: Tumor microenvironment; Pancreatic neoplasms; Neoplasm metastasis; Pancreatic stellate cells; Infiltration