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Mapping cell phenotypes in breast cancer

Nature Cancer volume 1, pages 156–157 (2020)Cite this article

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Tumor heterogeneity remains an obstacle to effective clinical management of breast cancer. Two new studies use high-dimensional imaging of single-cell protein expression in situ in clinical samples to link genomic alterations to multi-cellular features of the tumor microenvironment and reveal breast-cancer phenotypes associated with clinical outcome.

Tumor ecosystems comprise distinct microenvironments that encompass different cell lineages, including tumor cells, stromal cells and immune cells, each of which can assume a variety of phenotypes defined by co-expression of multiple proteins. High-content single-cell measurements of disaggregated tissue by mass cytometry or single-cell RNA sequencing can provide a valuable census of cell subsets found in the tumor microenvironment3. However, evidence suggests that tumor function is driven by complex interactions between these cell subsets, rather than by the presence of any specific cell population4,5. High-dimensional imaging offers a novel opportunity for understanding how single-cell function and tissue structure interact in determining disease progression and therapeutic response through quantitative measurement of the single-cell expression of numerous proteins simultaneously in intact tissue from patients with long-term clinical follow-up.

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Fig. 1: High dimensional imaging analysis of breast cancer.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Pathology, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA

    Leeat Keren & Michael Angelo

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  1. Leeat Keren
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  2. Michael Angelo
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Correspondence to Michael Angelo.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Keren, L., Angelo, M. Mapping cell phenotypes in breast cancer. Nat Cancer 1, 156–157 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43018-020-0031-9

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