Profiling non-small cell lung carcinoma cell line PC9 treated with etoposide, erlotinib and its combination with crizotinib

The non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) PC9 cell line is an established preclinical model for tyrosine kinase inhibitors. To be able to better understand the differences in response between individual cells, we performed treatment of PC9 cells grown in cell culture with etoposide, erlotinib and its combination with crizotinib, followed by Drop-seq. The addition of crizotinib was guided by our previous data that an erlotinib-resistant drug population may be sensitive to crizotinib. To better understand the common events in drug resistance, we compared the resistant cell populations arising from the treatment with etoposide and from the treatment with erlotinib. The results of our study will address emerging drug resistance that limits clinical usefulness of conventional and targeted strategies, particularly in NSCLC. Overall design: examining drug resistant cell populations using single cell RNA-seq