Fig. 2
From: CRO-67 has anti-cancer activity in pancreatic tumor cells and stromal cancer-associated fibroblasts
CRO-05 treatment in PDAC tumor explants from patients reduced tumor and CAF cell frequency, reduced cell proliferation, and increased cell death. PDAC tumor explants from N = 4 patients were cultured for 12 days and treated with 0, 10, 20 and 50 μg/mL of CRO-05 every 72 h. (a) Representative immunohistochemistry (IHC) images for Patient 1 explants stained for tumor cells (cytokeratin), CAFs (α-smooth muscle actin [αSMA]), proliferating cells (BrdU), and cell death (TUNEL). Positive staining for IHC is brown, positive TUNEL staining is green, and nuclei are blue. Quantification of IHC stain for (b) tumor cells, (c) CAFs, (d) proliferating cells, and (e) cell death was performed using QuPath software. Inset images for BrdU staining show nuclei positive for BrdU in brown compared to negative nuclear-only staining in blue. Cytokeratin staining was not quantifiable in Patient 2 (green symbols) due to a lack of tumor cells present in all tumor sections irrespective of control or CRO-05 treatments. Symbols represent the mean of 2–4 explants per treatment from each patient. Colors indicate percentage relative to control for each patient. Patient 3 explants (blue symbols) were not treated with 10 μg/mL CRO-05 due to limited availability of tumor tissue. Bars represent mean ± SD (N < 5). Asterisks indicate statistical significance as assessed by one-way ANOVA, and Bonferroni’s multiple comparisons tests (*p ≤ 0.05, **p ≤ 0.01).
