单细胞测序技术在乳腺癌研究中的应用

Application of single cell sequencing in breast cancer research

近年来推出的单细胞测序技术,从单个细胞的水平对基因组和转录组进行研究,相比于群体细胞测序,更适用于解决少量特殊样本的研究、异质性群体的分析及同时或互斥发生的基因组变化的查找等问题.对于乳腺癌这种异质性较强的癌症,群体细胞的结果并不足以满足很多临床相关问题的研究需求,单细胞测序技术恰好在其中发挥了重要的作用.本文从研究乳腺癌中极少量特殊细胞(如肿瘤干细胞、循环肿瘤细胞等)、癌症异质性和克隆演化及化疗耐药的分子机制等方面,对近年来单细胞测序在乳腺癌研究中的应用进行了综述,并对未来的研究方向进行了讨论.

Single cell sequencing developed in recent years, which studies genome and transcriptome at single cell level, is more suitable for solving problems on minor special sample studies, heterogenous population analysis and finding concurrent or mutually exclusive genomic events, compared to bulk sequencing. For breast cancer, which is highly heterogeneous, bulk sequencing data is not enough for solving many clinical problems, and single cell sequencing precisely plays an important role in it. This review, focusing on a minor special cell population in breast cancer (such as cancer stem cells, circulating tumor cells, et al), tumor heterogeneity and clonal evolution, and chemotherapy resistance, summarized application of single cell sequencing in breast cancer research in recent years, and discussed the future research directions.