Beijing Advanced Innovation Center for Genomics, Peking-Tsinghua Center for Life Sciences, Biomedical Pioneering Innovation Center (BIOPIC) and School of Life Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China; email:
Current affiliation: Institute of Cancer Research, Shenzhen Bay Laboratory, Shenzhen, Guangdong, 518132, China.
Annu Rev Immunol. 2021 Apr 26;39:583-609. doi: 10.1146/annurev-immunol-110519-071134. Epub 2021 Feb 26.
Understanding tumor immune microenvironments is critical for identifying immune modifiers of cancer progression and developing cancer immunotherapies. Recent applications of single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) in dissecting tumor microenvironments have brought important insights into the biology of tumor-infiltrating immune cells, including their heterogeneity, dynamics, and potential roles in both disease progression and response to immune checkpoint inhibitors and other immunotherapies. This review focuses on the advances in knowledge of tumor immune microenvironments acquired from scRNA-seq studies across multiple types of human tumors, with a particular emphasis on the study of phenotypic plasticity and lineage dynamics of immune cells in the tumor environment. We also discuss several imminent questions emerging from scRNA-seq observations and their potential solutions on the horizon.
了解肿瘤免疫微环境对于鉴定癌症进展的免疫调节剂和开发癌症免疫疗法至关重要。单细胞 RNA 测序（scRNA-seq）在剖析肿瘤微环境中的最新应用为肿瘤浸润免疫细胞的生物学带来了重要的见解，包括它们的异质性、动态性以及在疾病进展和对免疫检查点抑制剂及其他免疫疗法的反应中的潜在作用。这篇综述重点介绍了 scRNA-seq 研究在多种人类肿瘤中获得的关于肿瘤免疫微环境的知识进展，特别强调了对肿瘤微环境中免疫细胞表型可塑性和谱系动态的研究。我们还讨论了 scRNA-seq 观察结果中出现的几个迫在眉睫的问题及其潜在解决方案。
