Background
Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma is a devastating disease with poor outcome, generally characterized by an excessive stroma component. The
Conclusions
We developed and characterized different easy to set up 3D models to investigate the crosstalk between cancer and stroma cells for pancreatic cancer.
Results
We found clear evidence for mutual influence, such as increased proliferation and a shift towards a more mesenchymal phenotype in cancer cells and an activation of pancreatic stellate cells towards the myofibroblast phenotype. Using a heterospecies approach, which we coined virtual sorting, confirmed the findings we made initially in the human-human spheroids. Conclusions: We developed and characterized different easy to set up 3D models to investigate the crosstalk between cancer and stroma cells for pancreatic cancer.