Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest forms of cancer, and current treatments have only limited success. In this study, we aimed to explore whether combining immunotherapy with local tumor ablation and chemotherapy could improve outcomes for patients with advanced pancreatic cancer that cannot be surgically removed. We treated twelve patients and studied how their immune systems responded, using single-cell RNA sequencing techniques to analyze cancer and blood samples. We found that certain immune cells, called CD8-Temra cells, were linked to better survival, suggesting they could help guide future treatments. Our findings suggest that combining local tumor ablation with immunotherapy may improve the body’s ability to fight cancer, but larger studies are needed to confirm these results.

Progression-free Survival after Minimally Invasive Surgical Microwave Ablation plus Durvalumab and Tremelimumab for Unresectable Non-metastatic Locally Advanced Pancreatic Cancer. Topal et al. – 2025 – Communications Medicine

Data availability

A download of the filtered read count data for the tumor microenvironment and PBMC samples is readily available from this website. In addition to the read counts, the following metadata have been added to the files: i) patient number, ii) type of sample (pre- versus on-treatment) and cell type. Please note that patient and sample identifiers have been anonymized and randomized in these datasets, and may not correspond directly to identifiers used in the paper by Topal et al.