[Title]
Systematic dissection of tumor-normal single-cell ecosystems across a thousand tumors of 30 cancer types

[Author]

Junho Kang1,9, Jun Hyeong Lee2,9, Hongui Cha3, Jinhyeon An 2, Joonha Kwon 2,4, Seongwoo Lee1, Seongryong Kim1, Mert Yakup Baykan 1, So Yeon Kim2, Dohyeon An2, Ah-Young Kwon 5, Hee Jung An5,
Se-Hoon Lee 3,6 , Jung Kyoon Choi 2,7 & Jong-Eun Park 1,8

1Graduate School of Medical Science and Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Republic of Korea.
2Department of Bio and Brain Engineering, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Republic of Korea.
3Division of Hematology-Oncology, Department of Medicine, Samsung Medical Center, Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
4Division of Cancer Data Science, National Cancer Center, Bioinformatics Branch, Goyang, Republic of Korea.
5Department of Pathology, CHA Bundang Medical Center, CHA University, Seongnamsi, Republic of Korea.
6Department of Health Sciences and Technology, Samsung Advanced Institute of Health Science and Technology, Sungkyunkwan University School ofMedicine, Seoul, Republic of Korea.
7PentaMedix Co., Ltd., Seongnam-si,Gyeonggi-do, Republic of Korea.
8Biomedical ResearchCenter, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, Republic of Korea.
9These authors contributed equally: Junho Kang, Jun Hyeong Lee.
e-mail: shlee119@skku.edu; jungkyoon@kaist.ac.kr; jp24@kaist.ac.kr

[Journal] 

Nature Communications volume 15, Article number: 4067 (2024)


[Abstract]

The complexity of the tumor microenvironment poses significant challenges in cancer therapy. Here, to comprehensively investigate the tumor-normal ecosystems, we perform an integrative analysis of 4.9 million single-cell transcriptomes from 1070 tumor and 493 normal samples in combination with pan-cancer 137 spatial transcriptomics, 8887 TCGA, and 1261 checkpoint inhibitor-treated bulk tumors. We define a myriad of cell states constituting the tumor-normal ecosystems and also identify hallmark gene signatures across different cell types and organs. Our atlas characterizes distinctions between inflammatory fibroblasts marked by AKR1C1 or WNT5A in terms of cellular interactions and spatial co-localization patterns. Co-occurrence analysis reveals interferon-enriched community states including tertiary lymphoid structure (TLS) components, which exhibit differential rewiring between tumor, adjacent normal, and healthy normal tissues. The favorable response of interferon-enriched community states to immunotherapy is validated using immunotherapy-treated cancers (n = 1261) including our lung cancer cohort (n = 497). Deconvolution of spatial transcriptomes discriminates TLS-enriched from non-enriched cell types among immunotherapy-favorable components. Our systematic dissection of tumor-normal ecosystems provides a deeper understanding of inter- and intra-tumoral heterogeneity.