Table 1.

Cancer associated fibroblasts (CAFs) play a central role in the multistep processes of tumor initiation, progression, invasion, and metastases.

Molecule	Source Cell	Target Cell	Effect	Reference
Annexin A6	CAFs	Cancer cells	CAF derived annexin A6+ extracellular vesicles found to support pancreatic cancer aggressiveness	Leca et al., J Clin Invest, 2016 [30]
CXCL12	CAFs	Cancer cells	Effector of immunosuppression by FAP+ CAFs	Feig et al., Proc Natl Acad Sci, 2013 [31]
Collagen	CAFs	Cancer cells	Well aligned collagen in the stroma is associated with worse prognosis	Drifka et al., Oncotarget, 2016 [32]
Asporin	Activated pancreatic stellate cells, CAFs	Cancer cells	Enhances EMT, promotes cancer cell invasion and metastases	Wang et al., Cancer Lett, 2017 [33]
TGF-B	CAFs, Cancer cells	CAFs, Cancer cells, CD8 T-cells	Increases CAF stiffness and elongation Suppresses CD8 T cell acquisition to the tumor as well as function	Stylianou et al., Biochim Biophys Acta Gen Subj, 2018 [29] Ahmadzadeh & Rosenberg, J Immunol, 2005 [34]
MAPK, STAT3 signaling	CAFs	Cancer cells	Paracrine CAF TGF-B promotes MAPK and STAT3 signaling, which causes EMT and enhanced PDAC proliferation	Ligorio et al., Cell, 2019 [35]
Il-8	Senescent CAFs	Cancer cells	Prometastatic phenotype	Wang et al., 2017. [36]
Big-h3	CAFs	Tumor CD8+ T-cells	Inhibits tumor specific CD8 T-cells and increases tumor growth	Goehrig et al., Gut, 2019 [37]
FAP	CAFs	Cancer cells	Cancer cell motility, invasiveness and progression. Also, tumor angiogenesis and ECM deposition.	Kawase et al., BCM Gastroenterol, 2015 [38]
Podoplanin	CAFs	Cancer Cells	Worse outcome	Hu et al., Cell Physiol Biochem, 2018 [39]
Il-6	CAFs	Cancer cells	Survivin (apoptosis inhibitor) expression	Duluc et al., EMBO Mol Med, 2015 [40]
VEGF	Pancreatic stellate cells	Tumor stroma	Angiogenesis	Masamune et al., Am J Physiol Gastrointest Liver Physiol, 2008 [41]
SDF-1	CAFs	Cancer cells	Tumor progression and resistance to gemcitabine	Wei et al., Cell Death Dis, 2018 [42]
Thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP)	CAFs, simulated by cancer cell Il-1	Immune cells	Development of Th2 immunity, worse survival	Brunetto et al., J Immunother Cancer, 2019 [43]