Applications of Single-Cell Omics in Tumor Immunology

Abstract

The tumor microenvironment (TME) is an ecosystem that contains various cell types, including cancer cells, immune cells, stromal cells, and many others. In the TME, cancer cells aggressively proliferate, evolve, transmigrate to the circulation system and other organs, and frequently communicate with adjacent immune cells to suppress local tumor immunity. It is essential to delineate this ecosystem’s complex cellular compositions and their dynamic intercellular interactions to understand cancer biology and tumor immunology and to benefit tumor immunotherapy. But technically, this is extremely challenging due to the high complexities of the TME. The rapid developments of single-cell techniques provide us powerful means to systemically profile the multiple omics status of the TME at a single-cell resolution, shedding light on the pathogenic mechanisms of cancers and dysfunctions of tumor immunity in an unprecedently resolution. Furthermore, more advanced techniques have been developed to simultaneously characterize multi-omics and even spatial information at the single-cell level, helping us reveal the phenotypes and functionalities of disease-specific cell populations more comprehensively. Meanwhile, the connections between single-cell data and clinical characteristics are also intensively interrogated to achieve better clinical diagnosis and prognosis. In this review, we summarize recent progress in single-cell techniques, discuss their technical advantages, limitations, and applications, particularly in tumor biology and immunology, aiming to promote the research of cancer pathogenesis, clinically relevant cancer diagnosis, prognosis, and immunotherapy design with the help of single-cell techniques.

The Role of Somatic Mutations on the Immune Response of the Tumor Microenvironment in Prostate Cancer

“…The TME of cancer has been compared to an ecosystem that involves the delicate interplay of various cell types, including tumor cells, immune cells, stromal cells, and many others [101]. The introduction of various powerful single-cell methodologies, such as cytometry with time-of-flight (CyTOF) analysis [102,103] and single-cell genomics [104], has provided unprecedented insights into the molecular biology of the dynamic cell interactions that characterize the TME of PCa.…”

Age-associated differences in the cancer molecular landscape

“…OPEN ACCESS cells and other cell types in the tumor microenvironment, including immune cells, could also be different in patients of different ages. The advent of tools to analyze intercellular communication and spatial transcriptomic is expected to advance our understanding of age-associated immune-cancer crosstalk in tumors [57][58][59]. Finally, a better understanding of age-related tumor immune infiltration is needed to prioritize cancer patients who will benefit from specific immunotherapy [15,55].…”

A roadmap for translational cancer glycoimmunology at single cell resolution

“…The spotlight is currently on the tremendous potential brought by multicomponent 3D models for personalised oncoimmunology. These approaches supported by multi-omics characterization at single cell resolution [ 309 , 310 ] are positively contributing to better understand the role played by the cancer microenvironment in disease [ 311 , 312 ]. The exploitation of bioinformatics and computational tools backed by artificial intelligence has been decisive towards this objective, setting a roadmap ready to be translated to cancer glycobiology.…”