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Updated: Jan 15, 2026
Author Spotlight: Unveiling Transmembrane Protein Family-Related Markers in Gastric Cancer and Implications for Targeted Therapies
Published on: September 15, 2023
Multiregional single-cell transcriptomics reveals an association between partial EMT and immunosuppressive states in
Seunghoon Kim1,2,3,4, Hyun Jung Kee5,6, Dahee Kim5
1Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Information-Bio Convergence Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), UNIST-Gil 50, Eonyang-eup, Ulju-gun, Ulsan 44919, Republic of Korea.
Abstract:
Oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) is highly heterogeneous and metastatic, and the mechanisms driving OSCC development, progression, and metastasis remain elusive. Here, we performed single-cell RNA sequencing on 231,442 cells obtained from the tumor core (TC), tumor periphery (TP), adjacent surrounding tissue (ST), and metastatic lymph node (mLN) samples of 10 patients with human papillomavirus (HPV)-negative OSCC. TP and TC showed no major immune cell phenotype differences. Interestingly, partial EMT (p-EMT) cells showed significant activation of glycolysis and hypoxia signatures, serving as potential biomarkers for clinical outcomes. Moreover, p-EMT scores of epithelial cells positively correlated with M2 scores of tumor-associated macrophages, while the proportion of p-EMT at TP was negatively associated with that of GZMB + exhausted CD8+ T cells with cytotoxic potential and TNFRSF9 + mast cells, conferring an adverse prognosis. Our study provides insights into understanding the interplay between intratumoral heterogeneity and the tumor microenvironment of advanced HPV-negative OSCC.
