Project title: Revealing the complexities of the pituitary tumor microenvironment via single cell and spatial transcriptomic sequencing

Project No.: lzp-2025/1-0304

Period: 1 January 2026 – 31 December 2028

Project costs: 300 000,00 EUR

Principal Investigator: Dr. biol. Raitis Pečulis

Project summary:

Pituitary neuroendocrine tumors (PitNETs) are most common intracranial tumor, yet they seldom metastasize. Pituitary tissue shows plasticity, but mechanisms preventing cancer are unclear. The study will use spatial transcriptomics to investigate samples from SF1 lineage PitNETs, cell line models and cancer cells to: 1) identify spatial features preventing malignancy, analyzing cell interactions, cell types and pituitary plasticity; 2) explore clinical applicability of markers from gonadotroph PitNET spatial transcriptomic data, comparing PitNETs to other tumors, seeking novel therapeutic targets and functional investigating recent literature reports; 3) perform integrated data analysis linking spatial cell distribution with tumor cell composition from single cell data and identifying clinical group, lineage and PitNET specific localizations, biomarkers and common trends when comparing to other groups as well as reference data including PitNET, cancerous tumor and other neuroendocrine tumors. The project will characterize PitNET cell types and their spatial distribution. Functional experiments will use antisense RNA to investigate roles of recent literature finds and confirm novel discoveries of this project to advance understanding of therapeutic targets for SF1 lineage PitNETs and beyond. This aims to reveal PitNET biology, improve treatment, and potentially inform other cancer research.

Information published 05.01.2026.