Annual Reviews of Immunology: Zhang Zemin from Peking University reviewed the progress and application of single cell technology in the field of tumor microenvironment and immunotherapy

The tumor microenvironment is highly heterogeneous.

Recently, Professor Zhang Zemin of Peking University Biomedical Frontier Innovation Center (BIOPIC) was invited to publish a review article titled : Insights Gained from Single-Cell Analysis of Immune Cells in the Tumor Microenvironment in Annual Reviews of Immunology, a top review journal in immunology .

This review system summarizes the recent research progress of single-cell transcriptome technology in the analysis of tumor microenvironment, including the new characteristics of infiltrating T cells and myeloid immune cells, as well as its application and potential in revealing tumor immunotherapy mechanisms.

This work first summarizes the single-cell transcriptome technology, discusses the advantages and disadvantages of studying the tumor microenvironment based on the full-length transcriptome SMART-seq2 and microdroplet 5'or 3'RNA sequencing, and points out the single-cell transcriptome The rapid development of technology promotes the discovery of rare immune cell groups and the cognition of complex tumor microenvironment.

Subsequently, combined with the research team’s early research on infiltrating T cells in liver cancer, lung cancer, and colorectal cancer, this work analyzes other cancer types including melanoma, breast cancer, head and neck cancer, etc.

In addition, in addition to T cells, myeloid cells are also an important component of tumor infiltrating immune cells.

Finally, this work summarizes the recent research on the treatment mechanism of immune checkpoint inhibitors for patients with melanoma, lung cancer and kidney cancer, and emphasizes the importance of CXCR5/TCF1+CD8 T cells in an effective response to this treatment.

Ren Xianwen, associate researcher at the School of Life Sciences, Peking University, and Zhang Lei, a postdoctoral fellow at the Joint Center for Life Sciences (currently a distinguished researcher at the Shenzhen Bay Laboratory Oncology Institute), are the co-first authors, and Zhang Yuanyuan, a doctoral graduate from the School of Life Sciences, Peking University (now a postdoctoral fellow at the Joint Center for Life Sciences) , Li Ziyi (currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Immunology, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine) and Nathan Siemers, senior vice president of BIOZ, jointly completed this work.

Original source:

Xianwen Ren, et al.