ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2016
Pericyte-fibroblast transition promotes tumor growth and metastasis.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 263 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
263 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 406 citations in OpenAlex.
- Immunosuppressive roles of pericytes in cancer disease: insights from a systematic review and meta-analysis.Journal of translational medicine · 2026Pooled it
- Extracellular Matrix-MYCAF Signatures Correlate with Resistance to Neoadjuvant aPD-L1 Immune Checkpoint Inhibition with Durvalumab + Metformin in HPV+ HNSCC.Clinical cancer research : an official journal of the American Association for Cancer Research · 2025Trial
- Metabolic reprogramming in cancer-associated fibroblasts: orchestrating the tumor immune microenvironment and response to immune checkpoint blockade.Experimental hematology & oncology · 2026Review
- Targeting cancer-associated fibroblasts: therapeutic strategies, translational challenges, and future perspectives.Journal of hematology & oncology · 2026Review
- Extracellular Matrix Remodeling in Tumors: Forces Beyond Fibroblasts.Cancer research · 2026Article
- Regulation of PDGF-BB signaling in placental pericytes by soluble PDGFRβ isoforms: implications for fetoplacental vascular development.Angiogenesis · 2026Article
- FAPExperimental & molecular medicine · 2026Article
- Review
- Beyond EMT: Mesenchymal drift as an emerging driver of stromal-immune reprogramming in prostate cancer.iScience · 2026Review
- Cancer-associated fibroblasts: The silent conductors of tumor evolution and therapy refractoriness.Molecular biology reports · 2026Review
- The Origin of Cancer-Associated Fibroblasts (CAFs) in Brain Metastases: Seven Hypotheses and Current Evidence.Cancers · 2026Review
- Molecular phenotypes and spatial archetypes: A new framework for cancer-associated fibroblasts.Cancer cell · 2026Review
- NNMT and the methylation sink: integrating metabolism, epigenetics and immunity in cancer.BMC medicine · 2026Review
- Bone-derived Osterix+ osteolineage cells are a source of tumor-promoting myofibroblastic cancer-associated fibroblasts in breast cancer.Nature communications · 2026Article
- Mechanisms of Pericyte-Mediated Cancer Metastasis.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Review
- Hallmarks of epithelial-mesenchymal plasticity in cancer.Molecular cancer · 2026Review
- Nanomaterials targeting cancer-associated fibroblasts to overcome stromal barriers in cancer immunotherapy.Journal of nanobiotechnology · 2026Review
- Review
- A Single-Cell Atlas of Uterine Carcinosarcoma from Diverse Ancestries.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- High-yield isolation and characterization of microvascular niche cells from human full-thickness skin biopsies.Scientific reports · 2026Article
203 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
16 authors at 4 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Vascular pericytes, an important cellular component in the tumor microenvironment, are often associated with tumor vasculatures, and their functions in cancer invasion and metastasis are poorly understood. Here we show that PDGF-BB induces pericyte-fibroblast transition (PFT), which significantly contributes to tumor invasion and metastasis. Gain- and loss-of-function experiments demonstrate that PDGF-BB-PDGFRβ signaling promotes PFT both in vitro and in in vivo tumors. Genome-wide expression analysis indicates that PDGF-BB-activated pericytes acquire mesenchymal progenitor features. Pharmacological inhibition and genetic deletion of PDGFRβ ablate the PDGF-BB-induced PFT. Genetic tracing of pericytes with two independent mouse strains, TN-AP-CreERT2:R26R-tdTomato and NG2-CreERT2:R26R-tdTomato, shows that PFT cells gain stromal fibroblast and myofibroblast markers in tumors. Importantly, coimplantation of PFT cells with less-invasive tumor cells in mice markedly promotes tumor dissemination and invasion, leading to an increased number of circulating tumor cells and metastasis. Our findings reveal a mechanism of vascular pericytes in PDGF-BB-promoted cancer invasion and metastasis by inducing PFT, and thus targeting PFT may offer a new treatment option of cancer metastasis.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.