Cellular Transitions: Development, Physiology, and Cancer

Cellular Transitions in Development/Physiology vs. Cancer

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: