Computational Analysis of Single-Cell Gene Expression in the Tumor Microenvironment of Metastatic Cancer Cells in the Brain

Abstract

Brain metastases are the most common type of brain tumor, and around 10% to 26% of patients who die from cancer developed brain metastases [1]. Therefore, there is a great need to investigate the heterogeneity of these tumors so that people can identify and treat them. The developments of single cell RNA sequencing (scRNAseq) allow one to explore the TME (tumor microenvironment) and show how different genes can be expressed and stored in a computational library. In this study, I investigated published scRNAseq datasets of tumors from human patients with brain metastases. I chose to look at endothelial cells, and noticed that they participated in active communication with fibroblasts within the tumor microenvironment. Moreover, in another source that studied fibroblasts, I noticed that tumors are similar to endothelial cells, which may be an important aspect of the TME to target in therapeutics. This paper is a review and analysis of published scRNAseq datasets.