Single-cell transcriptomic analysis of cell lines derived from a metaplastic breast cancer with squamous metaplasia (MBC-SM) tissue

Although epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) is the favored hypothesis for why cancer metastasis occurs, the cause–effect relationship remains unclear due to inconsistent clinical evidence. In this study, we establised epithelial– and mesenhcymal–predominant cell clones from a patient derived-metaplastic breast carcinoma with squamous metaplasia tissue (MBC-SM), followed by in-depth characterization of the derived cell clones. Overall design: Before cells reaching confluence, total RNA of each cell clone was extracted with TRIzol reagent (Thermo Fischer Scientific, Waltham, MA, USA), including epithelial-predominant (n=3), E/M hybrid (n=2) and mesenchymal-predominant (n=3). Briefly, transcriptome libraries from the mRNA fractions were generated by Chromium Next GEM Single Cell 3' Reagent Kits v3.1 and sequenced on an Illumina NovaSeq X Plus.