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Patients newly diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma generally have poor survival, with heterogeneous rates of progression. Biomarkers that could predict progression and/or survival would help inform patients and providers as they make care decisions. In a previous retrospective study, we discovered that circulating thrombospondin-2 (THBS2) could, in combination with CA19-9, better distinguish patients with PDAC versus healthy controls. Here we evaluated whether THBS2 levels, previously not known to be prognostic, were associated with outcome in 68 patients at time of diagnosis of metastatic PDAC. Specifically, we interrogated the association of THBS2 level, alone or in combination with CA19-9, with progression by 90 days and/or survival to 180 days. The results indicate that elevated THBS2 levels alone, at the time of a metastatic PDAC diagnosis, can identify patients with a shorter time to death and thus help patients and providers when planning treatment., Competing Interests: CONFLICTS OF INTEREST Authors have no conflicts of interest to declare., (Copyright: © 2021 Gimotty et al.)

Barrett's esophagus (BE) is metaplasia of the squamous epithelium to a specialized columnar epithelium. BE progresses through low- and high-grade dysplasia before developing into esophageal adenocarcinoma. The BE microenvironment is not well defined. We compare 12 human clinical BE and adjacent normal squamous epithelium biopsies using single cell immunophenotyping by flow cytometry. A cassette of 19 epithelial and immune cell markers was used to detect differences between cellular compartments in normal and BE tissues. We found that the BE microenvironment has an immunological landscape distinct from adjacent normal epithelium. BE has an increased percentage of epithelial cells with a concomitant decrease in the percentage of immune cells, accompanied by a shift in the immune landscape from a predominantly T cell rich microenvironment in normal tissue to a B cell rich landscape in BE tissue. Hierarchical clustering separates BE and normal samples into two discrete groups based upon our 19-marker panel, but also reveals unexpected, shared phenotypes for three patients. Our results suggest that flow based single cell analysis may have the potential for revealing clinically relevant differences between BE and normal adjacent tissue, and that surface immunophenotypes could identify specific subpopulations from dysplastic tissue for further investigation., Competing Interests: CONFLICTS OF INTEREST E.L.C. receives research support from BD Technologies and Innovations, Janssen, and Merck and travel expenses from AstraZeneca and Foundation Medicine. G.W.F. receives research funding from Interscope. M.L.K. is a consultant to BSC, Dark Canyon Labs, Ferring, and Olympus. F.H., W.P., E.S., M.F., F.T., and R.B. are employees of BD Technologies and Innovation. F.H., W.P., E.S., F.T., and R.B. own stock in BD. M.S., T.A.B., M.D., S.S.Y., E.N.F., H.N., G.G.G., and A.K.R. have no competing interests.