Fig. 3: Deletion of Aldh1l2 in mouse models of pancreatic cancer.
From: ALDH1L2 regulates reactive oxygen species and acinar-to-ductal metaplasia in the pancreas
a, A scheme of pancreatic cancer development. Briefly, acinar cells undergo ADM upon injury, acquiring a ductal phenotype that is irreversible when Kras mutation occurs. This leads to the formation of PanINs, which will further develop into PDAC upon accumulation of oncogenic drivers such as Smad4, Tp53 and Cdkn2a. b, ALDH1L2 mRNA expression in patients with pancreatic cancer from the PAAD TCGA dataset (n = 179) compared with normal tissue expression from GTEx data (n = 171). Data represent the mean ± s.d. and were obtained from GEPIA61. c, A survival curve of patients with ALDH1L2-high (n = 45) and ALDH1L2-low (n = 45) pancreatic cancer. The threshold for ALDH1L2 expression classification was set as the median expression as measured by RNA sequencing and obtained from GEPIA61. d, ALDH1L2 protein expression in eight mouse PDAC cancer cell lines isolated from individual WT KPC mice, representative of three independent experiments. e, Representative immunohistochemistry staining of ALDH1L2 in the pancreas of 9-week-old KPC mice, representative of ten individual mice. f, Quantification of the area of normal tissue (N), low-grade PanINs (LG, PanIN 1 and 2) and high-grade PanINs (HG, PanIN 3 and PDAC) on H&E stained slides shown in g. Data represent the mean ± s.e.m. of a section at different levels from Aldh1l2 WT (n = 7) or Aldh1l2 KO (n = 6) mice. Two-way ANOVA with multiple comparison test, *P = 0.0421 for N and 0.0407 for HG. g, Representative images of H&E staining of the pancreas of 9-week-old Aldh1l2 WT or KO KPC mice, representative of six individual mice for KO and seven for WT. h, Disease-free survival of WT (n = 35) and Aldh1l2 KO (n = 29) KPC mice. i, Representative images of H&E staining of the pancreas of 15-week-old Aldh1l2 WT or KO KC mice, representative of eight individual mice for both KO and WT. j, The weight of pancreatic acinar tumours from 16–18-week-old ELSV mice. Data represented the mean ± s.d. of Aldh1l2 WT (n = 39) and Aldh1l2 KO (n = 9). Welch’s t-test, *P = 0.0144. Panel a created with BioRender.com.
