Single-cell sequencing: a promising approach for uncovering the mechanisms of tumor metastasis

Abstract

Single-cell sequencing (SCS) is an emerging high-throughput technology that can be used to study the genomics, transcriptomics, and epigenetics at a single cell level. SCS is widely used in the diagnosis and treatment of various diseases, including cancer. Over the years, SCS has gradually become an effective clinical tool for the exploration of tumor metastasis mechanisms and the development of treatment strategies. Currently, SCS can be used not only to analyze metastasis-related malignant biological characteristics, such as tumor heterogeneity, drug resistance, and microenvironment, but also to construct metastasis-related cell maps for predicting and monitoring the dynamics of metastasis. SCS is also used to identify therapeutic targets related to metastasis as it provides insights into the distribution of tumor cell subsets and gene expression differences between primary and metastatic tumors. Additionally, SCS techniques in combination with artificial intelligence (AI) are used in liquid biopsy to identify circulating tumor cells (CTCs), thereby providing a novel strategy for treating tumor metastasis. In this review, we summarize the potential applications of SCS in the field of tumor metastasis and discuss the prospects and limitations of SCS to provide a theoretical basis for finding therapeutic targets and mechanisms of metastasis.

The Hippo Pathway Effector Transcriptional Co-activator With PDZ-Binding Motif Correlates With Clinical Prognosis and Immune Infiltration in Colorectal Cancer

“…Tumor immunotherapy has been widely investigated and employed in clinical fields, as it holds great promise as a neoadjuvant therapy besides surgery and radiotherapy (61)(62)(63). At present, many inhibitors have been identified to play emerging roles in tumor suppression by regulating TME or assisting immuno-surveillance by immune cells (64).…”

Targeting macrophages: a novel treatment strategy in solid tumors

“…The occurrence of metastasis is influenced not only by the driving force of the tumor itself but also by the environment surrounding the tumor cells. In the TME, TAMs are closely associated with tumor metastasis [ 69 ].…”

Understanding Breast Cancers through Spatial and High-Resolution Visualization Using Imaging Technologies

“…As a recent example, when pairs of primary and metastatic tumor tissues were collected from TN patients and evaluated to determine their gene expression, gene mutations were rarely observed, but the gene expression signatures of immunomodulatory and other genes changed; this shift is thought to be one of the causes of the reduced or lack of efficacy of immunotherapeutic agents [ 66 ]. High-resolution profiling of cancer tissue at a single-cell level using scRNA-seq is a powerful tool to elucidate the nature and characteristics of the cell populations in complex types of cancer [ 67 , 68 ]; however, this method does not provide positional information about which cells a cancer cell is interacting with when the tissue is broken down into individual cells for sequencing.…”

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