Single-cell gene expression profiling of early tumorigenesis in genetically engineered mouse models of breast carcinoma

During early tumorigenesis tumors edit their gene expression to evade immune surveillance. Because of difficulty capturing early tumors, studies of gene editing have to date mostly investigated changes in expression of candidate genes involved in activating adaptive immunity, such as those needed for antigen presentation and processing. Here we took advantage of an aggressive genetically engineered mouse model (GEMM) of breast cancer that expresses inducible oncogenic HER2 to identify tumor edited genes without bias. Overall design: Eight-week-old ErbB2?Ex16+/-MTB+/- female mice were fed with 2 mg/ml doxycycline in the drinking water to induce multifocal breast tumor. scRNA-seq libraries were prepared from tumors harvested 5-10 days (early) or 30-35 days (late) (n=4 samples/group) after oncogene induction.