Cellular Transitions: Development, Physiology, and Cancer

Cellular Transitions: Development, Physiology, and Cancer

Cellular Transitions in Development/Physiology vs. Cancer

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Panel A: Development/Physiology vs. Cancer

Development/Physiology

  • Unidirectional Full Transition: During normal development or physiology, cells transition in a unidirectional manner from an X cell type to a Y cell type.
    • Markers Expression:
      • X cell: Exhibits high X markers and low/absent Y markers.
      • Y cell: Exhibits high Y markers and low/absent X markers.

Cancer

  • Bidirectional Aberrant/Partial Transition: In the context of cancer, cell states become more plastic, leading to bidirectional and often partial transitions between cell types (X-like to Y-like states).
    • Markers Expression:
      • X-like cell: Features intermediate levels of both X and Y markers.
      • Y-like cell: Similar to the X-like but exhibits more variability in markers expression amongst different instances.

Panel B: Expression Space Across Individuals

Development/Physiology

  • Consistency Across Individuals: In normal development, there's consistency across individuals in terms of cellular expression profiles, leading to well-defined expression states.

Cancer

  • Patient-specific Expression Profiles: In cancer, expression profiles become patient-specific, leading to variable and unique expression states for each patient.

Panel C: Examples of Cell Types and Transitions in Different Cancer Types

  • Carcinoma:

    • Epi. to mes. transition (EMT-like)
    • Epithelial senescence (EpiSen)
    • Neuroendocrine
    • Intestinal stem cells
    • Lung alveolar (AT2-like)
  • Glioma:

    • Neural progenitor cells (NPC-like)
    • Oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPC-like)
    • Astrocyte (AC-like)
    • Mesenchymal (MES-like)
  • Melanoma:

    • Melanocytes
    • Neural crest

Reference:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Interactions between cancer cells and immune cells drive transitions ...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
Microenvironment-driven dynamic chromatin changes in ... - NCBI
www.frontiersin.org
Cellular diversity through space and time: adding new dimensions to ...