Figure 2.

Tissue-specific properties of human decellularized scaffolds for PDAC cultures. H&E staining of PDAC cells cultured for 14 days on decellularized scaffolds showed (a) PANC-1 cells on pancreas scaffolds migrated into the ECM and (b) PANC-1 cells on liver scaffolds only attached on the edge of the ECM with no migration inward. (c) MIA PaCa-2 cells on pancreas scaffolds migrated into the ECM and (d) MIA PaCa-2 cells on liver scaffolds also migrated into the ECM. (e) PK-1 cells on pancreas scaffolds grew into thick clusters on the edge of the ECM and (f) PK-1 cells on liver scaffolds invaded the vessels and migrated into the ECM as thick clusters. Volcano plot visualizing the gross gene expression changes as determined by RNAseq comparing (g) PANC-1 cells on liver scaffolds versus pancreas scaffolds and (i) PK-1 cells on liver scaffolds versus pancreas scaffolds. Genes that showed significantly altered expression (LFC > 0.5, p < 0.05) are indicated in blue. Functional enrichment analysis of the differentially overexpressed genes with the lowest adjusted p-values between cells cultured on liver and pancreatic scaffolds is shown, (h,j) depict the results for PANC-1 and PK-1 cells, respectively. Bar length is analogous to the number of differentially expressed genes in the functional annotation category, while the bar color depicts the adjusted p-value for the hypergeometric test performed. (k) Volcano plot visualizing the gene expression changes as determined by RNAseq comparing PANC-1 cells on liver scaffolds versus pancreas scaffolds with significantly overexpressed genes (LFC > 0.5, p < 0.05) known to play a role in pancreatic cancer and metastasis highlighted. (l) GSEA plots showing enrichment of upregulated genes on liver versus pancreas scaffolds in basal compared to classical Moffit PDAC subtypes from the TCGA. NES, normalized enrichment score; FDR, false discovery rate. Scale bars for (a–f) are 50 µm. (n = 8 per condition for (a–f)), and (n = 3 per condition (g–l)).