Studying inter- and intra-tumor heterogeneity of triple-negative breast cancer

Leshchyk, Anastasia

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Studying inter- and intra-tumor heterogeneity of triple-negative breast cancer

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Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is known for its high inter- and intratumor heterogeneity. TNBC is associated with poor survival prognosis due to its aggressiveness and lack of effective drug targeted therapies. In this project, we are examining single-cells RNA-seq data of six primary untreated TNBC tumors. We apply deep unsupervised single-cell clustering method (DUSC) to reveal new subpopulations of cells sharing common transcriptomic features and proving new biological insights to the TNBC heterogeneity. We propose DUSC as a possible method to identify copy-number variations within tumor subclones, where degree of copy number changes greatly correlates with the patient's survival prognosis. Our results provide new biological insights of TNBC, suggesting new possible research areas.

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