Single-cell transcription analysis reveals the tumor origin and heterogeneity of human bilateral renal clear cell carcinoma

Abstract

Bilateral renal clear cell carcinoma (BRCC) is a rare type of renal cell carcinoma (RCC) that accounts for only 1–5% of RCC cases and has a poor clinical prognosis. The origin, tumor microenvironment, cellular molecular features, and intra-tumoral heterogeneity of BRCC are still unclear. We downloaded BRCC single-cell transcriptome sequencing data from the gene expression omnibus database biochip GSE171306, containing 3,575 cells from left-sided clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) and 3,568 cells from right-sided ccRCC, and used a series of R packages for data quality control (QC) and subsequent analysis of BRCC single-cell transcriptome data, including the use of the R packages Seurat and scCancer for cell QC, identification of major cell types, and cell annotation; R package scran for calculation of cell cycle scores; R package infercnv for malignancy scoring of tumor cells; R package ReactomeGSA for functional enrichment analysis; R package Monocle 2 for the analysis of cell differentiation trajectories; and R package CellphoneDB for the analysis of intercellular interactions. In this study, by analyzing the high-quality single-cell transcriptome data of BRCC, we identified 18 cell types and found that left- and right-sided ccRCC were approximately the same in terms of cell type and the number of each cell but differed significantly in terms of tumor cell malignancy score, tumor microenvironment, and cell stemness score. In the cell differentiation trajectory analysis of BRCC, we found that endothelial cells and macrophages play an extremely important role in its tumor progression. Further cell communication analysis was performed, and we found that it may signal through ligand–receptors, such as vascular endothelial growth factor–vascular endothelial growth factor receptor1 (VEGF–VEGFR1), MIF–(CD74-CXCR4), and growth arrest-specific protein 6–AXL, to influence the development of BRCC. The analysis of single-cell transcriptomic data of human BRCC suggests that left- and right-sided ccRCC may be of the same tumor origin, but the left-sided ccRCC is more malignant and has a better immune response.

Keywords

• single-cell transcriptome
• bilateral renal clear cell carcinoma
• intratumoral heterogeneity
• tumor microenvironment
• cellular differentiation trajectory