eLife: A "hierarchy" of breast cancer cells or a potential cause of patient therapy tolerance.

September 17, 2020 // -- You may have heard the old adage that raising children requires village-wide effort; scientists from the University of Cincinnati believe the same analogy may apply to cell and cancer growth, especially breast cancer, which they recently discovered could take different forms or stages of life to promote cancer cell growth and spread, according to research published in the international journal eLife.
Photo Source: USC Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center researcher Syn Yeo says the findings underscore the need and importance of explaining the presence of specific cell states in tumors, which may help identify specific combinations of drugs to eliminate all cell states, effectively suppressing or preventing cancer cells from developing certain tolerances to therapy.
When it comes to breast cancer, we all know that the cells in breast tumors are diverse, and this diversity poses a problem for patients, as specific subpopulations of tumor cells may become resistant to the treatment and eventually lead to a recurrence of breast cancer.
One factor that causes this diversity in cells is that tumor cells can survive in different cell states, from stem cell-like cells that can be converted to other cell types to more differentiated cells that can be used for specific purposes or for specific functions.
Cancer cells with stem cell-like properties are often thought to induce drug tolerance and are at the top of the tumor hierarchy, such as the role of "king" or "queen", while the most differentiated tumor cells are at the bottom, just like ordinary residents. In the
study, researchers used animal models of breast cancer to determine the hierarchy of tumors outside of "ruler cells" and "ordinary cells", identifying and classifying individual cells, which may help them understand the purpose of each single cell, while analyzing large numbers of tumor cells may sometimes mask the true behavior of cells. 'We were able to find complex cell state spectrums between different tumor types, from stem cells to primary cells to more differentiated cells,' said
Yeo.
The results of this paper are important, and later researchers will continue to delve into how these particular cell states promote tumor growth so that researchers can use a combination of drug strategies to target these cells;
() Original source: Syn Kok Yeo, Xiaoting Zhu, Takako Okamoto, et al. Single-cell RNA-sequencing reveals distinct patterns of cell state heterogeneity in mouse models of breast cancer, eLife (2020). DOI:10.7554/eLife.58810.