Frontiers in Oncology (Nov 2022)

Single-cell transcriptomic analysis of the tumor ecosystem of adenoid cystic carcinoma

  • Quanquan Lin,
  • Zhanjie Fang,
  • Jinlong Sun,
  • Fei Chen,
  • Yipeng Ren,
  • Zhenhong Fu,
  • Sefei Yang,
  • Lin Feng,
  • Feng Wang,
  • Zhigang Song,
  • Wei Chen,
  • Wenjun Yu,
  • Chen Wang,
  • Yixin Shi,
  • Yue Liang,
  • Haizhong Zhang,
  • Hongzhu Qu,
  • Xiangdong Fang,
  • Qing Xi

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fonc.2022.1063477
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12

Abstract

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Adenoid cystic carcinoma (ACC) is a malignant tumor that originates from exocrine gland epithelial cells. We profiled the transcriptomes of 49,948 cells from paracarcinoma and carcinoma tissues of three patients using single-cell RNA sequencing. Three main types of the epithelial cells were identified into myoepithelial-like cells, intercalated duct-like cells, and duct-like cells by marker genes. And part of intercalated duct-like cells with special copy number variations which altered with MYB family gene and EN1 transcriptomes were identified as premalignant cells. Developmental pseudo-time analysis showed that the premalignant cells eventually transformed into malignant cells. Furthermore, MYB and MYBL1 were found to belong to two different gene modules and were expressed in a mutually exclusive manner. The two gene modules drove ACC progression into different directions. Our findings provide novel evidence to explain the high recurrence rate of ACC and its characteristic biological behavior.

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