Single-cell profiling approaches to probing tumor heterogeneity

Tumor heterogeneity is a major hindrance in cancer classification, diagnosis and treatment. Recent technological advances have begun to reveal the true extent of its heterogeneity. Single-cell analysis (SCA) is emerging as an important approach to detect variations in morphology, genetic or proteomic expression. In this review, we revisit the issue of inter- and intra-tumor heterogeneity, and list various modes of SCA techniques (cell-based, nucleic acid-based, protein-based, metabolite-based and lipid-based) presently used for cancer characterization. We further discuss the advantages of SCA over pooled cell analysis, as well as the limitations of conventional techniques. Emerging trends, such as high-throughput sequencing, are also mentioned as improved means for cancer profiling. Collectively, these applications have the potential for breakthroughs in cancer treatment.