Single-cell RNA-sequencing reveals the landscape of cervical cancer heterogeneity

Cervical cancer (CC) is the forth leading cause of deaths in gynecological tumor. Although the etiology of CC has been extensively investigated, the exact pathogenesis of CC remains incomplete. Therefore, we applied single-cell RNA sequencing on cancer tissue and normal adjacent tissue from a patient with CC. Together, we identified four tumor cell subpopulations in tumor cells, which had specific signature genes with different biological functions and presented different prognosis. Among them, we identified a subset of cancer stem cell (CSCs), which was related to the developmental hierarchy of tumor progression. These data facilitate the understanding of the CC landscape and provides deeper insights into the development of prognostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets in the CC. Overall design: In this study, we performed single cell RNA sequencing on cervical tumor tissue and normal adjacent tissue from cervical patients in an aim to discover the heterogeneity of tumor cells in cervical cancer and their interactions with other cells.