Theses (MSc. Molecular Medicine)

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) had a bad prognosis where the patient often has zero or easily dismissed symptoms. Pancreatic cancer is often detected in the late-stage and pancreatic cancer patients’ survival rate is greatly reduced after 5 years. The pancreatic stellate cell (PSC) takes up a small part of the pancreas. Pancreatic cancer cells (PCC) and PSC were found to co-influence each other when cultured together. PSC is quiescent in nature and is activated by transforming growth factor-beta (TGF- β), sonic hedgehog (Shh), and platelet- derived growth factor (PDGF) and these factors are found in PCC. This study is aimed to investigate how PCC and PSC co-influence each other. PSCs were treated with conditioned media of four different PCC cell lines (AsPC1, PANC10.05, SW1990 and BxPC3) and the viability of PSCs was measured. These four cell lines represent pancreatic cancer at various stages. Our findings showed that PCC conditioned media (CM) at different concentrations does affect PSC viability. PSC showed significantly reduced viability when treated with 30% of SW1990 and AsPC-1 CM at 24-hour intervals. Meanwhile, at 48-hour intervals, PSC showed significantly decreased viability in BxPC-3 and SW1990 CM. In conclusion, PCC of different cancer stages does affect the viability of PSCs.