Therapeutic potential and molecular biology of UNC5B in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC)

Under some unknown circumstances, primary PDAC undergoes EMT to acquire new phenotypic and cellular features to break away from the primary organ and travel to secondary organs to settle, known as metastasis. Currently, there are no therapeutic or preventive approaches for this phenomenon. Our preliminary results demonstrated that UNC5B knock out, (UNC5B^-/-), a receptor for Netrin-1, led to No metastasis in our mouse model compared to UNC5B +/- model. UNC5B is a dependence Receptor (DR), unlike classical membrane receptors, which are active only when bound to their ligand, DRs are active in both ligand-bound and unbound states. In the presence of ligand, cells receive positive signals (survival, migration, and invasion) and in the absence of ligand, cells receive negative signals (apoptosis). The molecular biology and mechanism of how UNC5B mediates cellular plasticity or apoptosis is unknown.

UNC5B plays a pivotal role in PDAC cellular plasticity. 

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