“We were interested in gaining new insights into how sympathetic nerves interact with all of the other cells within that pancreatic cancer ecosystem, and how these interactions influence pancreatic cancer,” said the study’s first author, Ariana Sattler, Ph.D., who completed the work as a doctoral candidate in the OHSU Graduate Program in Biomedical Sciences. The findings are published in JCI Insight.

Scientists have long studied components of the tumor ecosystem such as the fibroblasts, immune and blood vessel cells but often overlooked nerves, she said. One central reason is that the main bodies of nerve cells sit outside tumors, making them harder to detect with traditional sequencing tools.