Dissecting the transcriptomic landscape of the human intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma by single cell RNA-sequencing

Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) is the second most common malignancy arising in the liver, featured with high tumor heterogeneity and dismal prognosis. The cellular disversity and molecular basis of tumor cells interacted with surrounding niche cells remains poorly understood, limiting the development of targeted anti-tumor therapies. Overall design: To comprehensively elucidate the ICC heterogeneity, we employed single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) to profile 31,302 cells of five ICC samples, as well as three paired adjacent non-tumor tissues. Our results identify 31 cell subtypes and the heterogeneous malignant subtype was highly patient-specific, which has differential proliferative, migratory and inflammation phenotype.