Fig. 4: Progenitor cancer cells are the most proliferative cancer cells.
From: Single-cell RNA-seq reveals that glioblastoma recapitulates a normal neurodevelopmental hierarchy
a Diffusion plot of the roadmap of whole-tumor cancer cells showing that cycling cells are predominantly glial progenitor cancer cells. Cycling cells are defined by >1.5 in either the G1/S or G2/M scores. b Bar chart showing that the proportion of cycling cells increases with increasing glial progenitor score. c Simplified roadmap in principal component space with select fetal brain cell types. Projected OLCs and GPCs overlap and are high for progenitor score, whereas interneurons, and tRG/astrocytes are lower in progenitor score, but occupy opposite ends of the lineage score. d Projection of glioma stem cells (GSCs) on the simplified roadmap highlights the location of CD24 and HLA within the hierarchy. For each gene, the simplified roadmap projection shows the expression of this gene in GSCs, and the histograms show the proportion of cells where CD24, HLA, and PROM1 (CD133) were detected at differing positions in the hierarchy. e Mass cytometry pseudo-color dot-plots showing the proportion of whole-tumor cells, progenitor cancer cells, and non-progenitor cells that are in S-phase. The progenitor cancer cell population has the highest proportion of cells in S-phase (box). f Mass cytometry showing that progenitor cancer cells are the main cycling cell population in the tumor. Pie charts showing the proportion of progenitor cells (CD133+, OLIG2+, PDGFRA+) in the tumor (left) and the cycling population (right).
