ArticlePloS one2017
"Stealth dissemination" of macrophage-tumor cell fusions cultured from blood of patients with pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.
Article in PloS one, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 53 papers.
What it found
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Who cites it
53 citing papers in PubMed, 70 citations in OpenAlex.
- The underexplored complexity of pancreatic cancer: Early dissemination and quiescence.Biochimica et biophysica acta. Reviews on cancer · 2026Review
- Concurrent P-Selectin Targeting Nanoparticle Orchestrates Tumor-Immune Dynamics for Advanced Immunochemotherapy.ACS nano · 2026Article
- Early cellular plasticity promotes progression and dissemination in pancreatic adenocarcinoma.Cancer metastasis reviews · 2026Review
- The influence of cell-cell fusion on cancer heterogeneity and its promise for targeted treatments.Cellular oncology (Dordrecht, Netherlands) · 2026Review
- Implications of Heterotypic Cell Fusion in Cancer.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2026Review
- Cell-Cell Fusion as a Mechanism of Immune Evasion and Metastatic Progression.Advances in experimental medicine and biology · 2026Review
- Surfaceome: a new era in the discovery of immune evasion mechanisms of circulating tumor cells.Molecular oncology · 2025Review
- Circulating Tumor Microenvironment in Metastasis.Cancer research · 2025Review
- Gravity-based microfiltration reveals unexpected prevalence of circulating tumor cell clusters in ovarian and colorectal cancer.Communications medicine · 2025Article
- Cell fusion as a driver of metastasis: re-evaluating an old hypothesis in the age of cancer heterogeneity.Frontiers in immunology · 2025Review
- Cytokeratin expression and distribution pattern of epithelioid macrophages in animals with different pathological forms of bovine paratuberculosis: potential role in resilience to PTB.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2025Article
- Decoding Metastasis: From Cell Death to Fusion in Cancer Progression.Current cancer drug targets · 2025Review
- Article
- Ultra high content analyses of circulating and tumor associated hybrid cells reveal phenotypic heterogeneity.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Cell Fusion and Syncytia Formation in Cancer.Results and problems in cell differentiation · 2024Review
- Characterisation of circulating tumor-associated and immune cells in patients with advanced-stage non-small cell lung cancer.Clinical & translational immunology · 2024Article
- Phagocytosis-initiated tumor hybrid cells acquire a c-Myc-mediated quasi-polarization state for immunoevasion and distant dissemination.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Cell-in-Cell Structures in Gastrointestinal Tumors: Biological Relevance and Clinical Applications.Journal of personalized medicine · 2023Review
- Adopted neoplastic cells and the consequences of their existence.Oncotarget · 2023Article
- Vascular regulation of disseminated tumor cells during metastatic spread.Biophysics reviews · 2023Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
15 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Here we describe isolation and characterization of macrophage-tumor cell fusions (MTFs) from the blood of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) patients. The MTFs were generally aneuploidy, and immunophenotypic characterizations showed that the MTFs express markers characteristic of PDAC and stem cells, as well as M2-polarized macrophages. Single cell RNASeq analyses showed that the MTFs express many transcripts implicated in cancer progression, LINE1 retrotransposons, and very high levels of several long non-coding transcripts involved in metastasis (such as MALAT1). When cultured MTFs were transplanted orthotopically into mouse pancreas, they grew as obvious well-differentiated islands of cells, but they also disseminated widely throughout multiple tissues in "stealth" fashion. They were found distributed throughout multiple organs at 4, 8, or 12 weeks after transplantation (including liver, spleen, lung), occurring as single cells or small groups of cells, without formation of obvious tumors or any apparent progression over the 4 to 12 week period. We suggest that MTFs form continually during PDAC development, and that they disseminate early in cancer progression, forming "niches" at distant sites for subsequent colonization by metastasis-initiating cells.
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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.