Dissecting esophageal squamous-cell carcinoma ecosystem by single-cell transcriptomic analysis
Xiannian Zhang, Linna Peng, Yingying Luo, Shaosen Zhang, Yang Pu, Yamei Chen, Wenjia Guo, Jiacheng Yao, Mingming Shao, Wenyi Fan, Qionghua Cui, Yiyi Xi, Yanxia Sun, Xiangjie Niu, Xuan Zhao, Liping Chen, Yuqian Wang, Yachen Liu, Xinyu Yang, Chengcheng Wang, Ce Zhong, Wen Tan, Jianbin Wang, Chen Wu, Dongxin Lin
Abstract
Esophageal squamous-cell carcinoma (ESCC), one of the most prevalent and lethal malignant disease, has a complex but unknown tumor ecosystem. Here, we investigate the composition of ESCC tumors based on 208,659 single-cell transcriptomes derived from 60 individuals. We identify 8 common expression programs from malignant epithelial cells and discover 42 cell types, including 26 immune cell and 16 nonimmune stromal cell subtypes in the tumor microenvironment (TME), and analyse the interactions between cancer cells and other cells and the interactions among different cell types in the TME. Moreover, we link the cancer cell transcriptomes to the somatic mutations and identify several markers significantly associated with patients' survival, which may be relevant to precision care of ESCC patients. These results reveal the immunosuppressive status in the ESCC TME and further our understanding of ESCC.