Desmoplasia

Desmoplasia, or the desmoplastic reaction, is the abundant fibrotic stromal response accompanying the development and progression of many tumors, and is especially prominent in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. It comprises activated fibroblasts together with the dense extracellular matrix they deposit, and its extent is under investigation for prognostic value.

Because desmoplasia is a response rather than a fixed property, experimental models reproduce it to differing degrees, and tumor kinetics matter: rapidly developing transplantation tumors tend to shift the stromal architecture and CAF composition. In pancreatic cancer, grafting organoids into the pancreatic duct yields slower-growing tumors with a more abundant desmoplastic reaction, closer to human disease, than grafting into the pancreatic parenchyma.