Single-Cell Transcriptome Analysis Identifies Ligand-Receptor Pairs Associated With BCP-ALL Prognosis

B cell precursor acute lymphoblastic leukemia (BCP-ALL) is a blood cancer that originates from the abnormal proliferation of B-lymphoid progenitors. Cell population components and cell-cell interaction in the bone marrow microenvironment are significant factors for progression, relapse, and therapy resistance of BCP-ALL. In this study, we identified specifically expressed genes in B cells and myeloid cells by analyzing single-cell RNA sequencing data for seven BCP-ALL samples and four healthy samples obtained from a public database. Integrating 1356 bulk RNA sequencing samples from a public database and our previous study, we found a total of 57 significant ligand-receptor pairs (24 upregulated and 33 downregulated) in the autocrine crosstalk network of B cells. Via assessment of the communication between B cells and myeloid cells, another 29 ligand-receptor pairs were discovered, some of which notably affected survival outcomes. A score-based model was constructed with least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) using these ligand-receptor pairs. Patients with higher scores had poorer prognoses. This model can be applied to create predictions for both pediatric and adult BCP-ALL patients.