Integrated analysis of single-cell and bulk RNA sequencing data reveals an immunostimulatory microenvironment in tumor thrombus of osteosarcoma

Abstract Tumor thrombus of bone sarcomas represents a unique reservoir for various types of cancer and immune cells, however, the investigation of tumor thrombus at a single-cell level is very limited. And it is still an open question to identify the thrombus-specific tumor microenvironment that is...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Tao Ji, Qianyu Shi, Song Mei, Jiuhui Xu, Haijie Liang, Lu Xie, Tingting Ren, Kunkun Sun, Dasen Li, Xiaodong Tang, Peng Zhang, Wei Guo
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Nature Publishing Group 2023-05-01
Series:Oncogenesis
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1038/s41389-023-00474-2
Description
Summary:Abstract Tumor thrombus of bone sarcomas represents a unique reservoir for various types of cancer and immune cells, however, the investigation of tumor thrombus at a single-cell level is very limited. And it is still an open question to identify the thrombus-specific tumor microenvironment that is associated with the tumor-adaptive immune response. Here, by analyzing bulk tissue and single-cell level transcriptome from the paired thrombus and primary tumor samples of osteosarcoma (OS) patients, we define the immunostimulatory microenvironment in tumor thrombus of OS with a higher proportion of tumor-associated macrophages with M1-like states (TAM-M1) and TAM-M1 with high expression of CCL4. OS tumor thrombus is found to have upregulated IFN-γ and TGF-β signalings that are related to immune surveillance of circulating tumor cells in blood circulation. Further multiplexed immunofluorescence staining of the CD3/CD4/CD8A/CD68/CCL4 markers validates the immune-activated state in the tumor thrombus samples. Our study first reports the transcriptome differences at a single-cell level between tumor thrombus and primary tumor in sarcoma.
ISSN:2157-9024