Study of metabolic change produced by chemotherapy in pancreas cancer

Abstract

Despite its low incidence, pancreatic cancer is responsible for many deaths each year due to its aggressiveness, late detection, and ease of metastasis. Currently, the best treatment is complete resection of the tumor followed by the administration of adjuvant chemotherapy.

This project studies the possibility that pancreatic tumor cells can make a metabolic change after being treated with FOLFIRINOX and gemcitabine with Nab-paclitaxel, the two types of chemotherapy most used in patients with pancreatic cancer. In particular, we want to demonstrate that the use of adjuvant chemotherapy favors the metabolic change when cells use fatty acids as a source of energy, because tumor cells behave more aggressively in lipid environments.

To this end, 4 pancreatic tumor cell lines (PL-45, MIA PaCa-2, PANC-1 and BxPC-3) are analyzed under basal conditions to determine the type of metabolism they present and their dependence, capacity and flexibility to use glucose and fatty acids. as energy sources. Later, 2 of these cell lines (MIA PaCa-2 and PANC-1) are treated to compare the differences between the cells in basal conditions and after receiving a stimulus of FOLFIRINOX, on the one hand, and gemcitabine with Nab-paclitaxel on the other.

Finally, it is proven that the use of these drugs leads to a metabolic reprogramming that produces a loss of dependence and an increase in flexibility to use energy sources different from those measured in all the cases studied.