iScience (Sep 2021)

Single-cell transcriptome analysis of diffuse large B cells in cerebrospinal fluid of central nervous system lymphoma

  • Haoyu Ruan,
  • Zhe Wang,
  • Yue Zhai,
  • Ying Xu,
  • Linyu Pi,
  • Jihong Zheng,
  • Yihang Zhou,
  • Cong Zhang,
  • Ruofan Huang,
  • Kun Chen,
  • Xiangyu Li,
  • Weizhe Ma,
  • Zhiyuan Wu,
  • Jie Shen,
  • Xuan Deng,
  • Chao Zhang,
  • Ming Guan

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 24, no. 9
p. 102972

Abstract

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Summary: Diffuse large B cells in the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF-DLBCs) have offered great promise for the diagnostics and therapeutics of central nervous system lymphoma (CNSL) leptomeningeal involvement. To explore the phenotypic states of CSF-DLBCs, we analyzed the transcriptomes of more than one thousand CSF-DLBCs from six patients with CNSL diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) using Smart-seq2 single-cell RNA sequencing. CSF-DLBCs were defined based on abundant expression of B-cell markers, the active cell proliferation and energy metabolism properties, and immunoglobulin light chain restriction. We identified inherent heterogeneity of CSF-DLBCs, which were mainly manifested in cell cycle state, cancer-testis antigen expression, and classification based on single-cell germinal center B-cell signature. In addition, the 16 upregulated genes in CSF-DLBCs compared to various normal B cells showed great possibility in the homing effect of the CNS-DLBCL for the leptomeninges. Our results will provide insight into the mechanism research and diagnostic direction of CNSL-DLBCL leptomeningeal involvement.

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