Identifying and Characterizing Lung Cancer Tumor Initiating Cells Using Single Cell Analysis

摘要

Lung cancer, with more than one million deaths, is the number one killer among cancers in both men and women worldwide. Despite numerous advances in our knowledge during the recent years, early detection and treatment of lung cancer have not yet been fulfilled and need to be improved. A group of cancer cells called tumor-initiating cells (TICs) are a subpopulation of cells believed to drive the progression of solid tumors. TICs are proposed to persist in tumors as a distinct population and cause relapse and metastasis by giving rise to new tumors. To find out more about tumor initiation in lung cancer, we looked into gene expression of individual cells. This will help us identify a specific gene expression pattern in TICs. As TICs are a rare population, their study at the single cell level may shed light to the tumor initiation process, which has been neglected in bulk cell studies currently applied. For this purpose, we used enriched TIC lines from different lung cancer patient tumors as well as circulating tumor cells (CTCs) obtained from cancer patients' blood. CTCs are rare cells, which have separated from the initial tumor and move around in the blood stream, spreading to other parts and causing metastasis.