Heterogeneity of therapy-resistant CML cells

Purpose: We previously demonstrated that immunophenotypically CD34-CD38- TKI resistant LSC/LIC population was clearly heterogeneous. The goal of this study is to explore more about the drug-resistant LSC/LICs Methods: CML patient cells were treated for 7 days with imatinib and live cells were subjected to scRNA-sequencing Results: scRNA-seq reveals heterogeneity in the therapy resistant cells. Distinct expression profiles, yet with an interrelated continuumsuggest the existence of a depply-quiescent persister population within resistant cells. Conclusions: In this study using single cell transcriptomics and single cell metabolomics analyses we identify and characterize a deeply-quiescent/persister CML LSC/LIC population subset of CML patient cells which is highly dependent on FAO for their metabolomic requierements Overall design: Single cell transcriptomics of imatinib resistant CML LSC/LICs