Single-cell transcriptomic landscape of epithelial heterogeneity in metastatic hormone-naïve prostate cancer

Single-cell transcriptomic profiling was performed on diagnostic prostate biopsy specimens from patients with metastatic hormone-naïve prostate cancer to characterize epithelial tumor heterogeneity at diagnosis. Integrated and case-specific analyses revealed that tumors are composed of heterogeneous epithelial cell populations, including basal-associated and epithelial–mesenchymal transition–related transcriptional states, in addition to conventional luminal epithelial cells. No discrete epithelial cluster with high expression of canonical neuroendocrine markers was detected at baseline. These data provide a single-cell–level resource describing epithelial transcriptional states in treatment-naïve metastatic prostate cancer. Overall design: Diagnostic prostate biopsy specimens from five patients with metastatic hormone-naïve prostate cancer were subjected to single-cell RNA sequencing using the 10x Genomics Fixed RNA Profiling (Flex) platform. The study was designed to characterize epithelial tumor heterogeneity at diagnosis using integrated and case-specific single-cell transcriptomic analyses.