126-Macropinocytosis Maintains CAF Subtype

Paper Talk · Oct 8, 2025 · 16m

This paper details how macropinocytosis—a cellular process for scavenging extracellular fluids—is crucial for maintaining the identity of myofibroblasts (myCAFs), a subtype of cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), in pancreatic cancer, specifically under glutamine stress. The authors, Zhang et al., demonstrate that inhibiting macropinocytosis in CAFs forces a shift from myCAFs to the inflammatory iCAF subtype via a MEK-ERK-dependent intermediate state. This CAF plasticity fundamentally alters the tumor microenvironment by reducing collagen deposition and increasing vascular expansion, which…