Figure 3. Gene expression profiling and data deconvolution confirms an abundant tumor stromal component and implicates an increase in a specific myeloid cell sub-population in the DAC-treated tumors.
(A) Expression of Chi3l3 mRNA is significantly increased by DAC treatment in the KPC tumors in this study. (B) Chi3l3 mRNA is induced in CD11b+ splenic macrophages from mice hosting C26-GM colon cancer cells engineered to secrete GM-CSF (NCBI GSE5455), compared to CD11b+ cells isolated from tumor-free mice. (C) Results of deconvolution analysis for proportions of cell populations performed using the ImmGen RNA-seq reference dataset (see Methods). This analysis suggests that the tumors in vivo contain approximately equal (20 percent each) populations of malignant KPC cells, stromal cells, macrophage-lineage cells, and other cell types.