Discovering triple negative breast cancers (TNBC) transcriptomic profiles via massive screening of single cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) datasets.

Abstract

Triple negative breast cancers (TNBC) account for 18% of the breast cancer patients in Malaysia and also account for one of the worst prognoses albeit it is the rare cancer types. TNBC is defined as breast cancers that tested negative on all 3 tests of oestrogen/progesterone (ER/PR) receptor and human epidermal growth receptor 2 (HER2). Understanding the TNBC biology is challenging due to the fact of multiple subtypes and its heterogeneity in patient samples. Here we attempt to examine the transcriptional profiling of TNBC using the single cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) analysis of different publicly available TNBC datasets. In comparison to bulk-RNA, scRNA-seq allowed the mapping of transcriptional profiling of TNBC at the single cell resolution and able to accurately pinpoint pan-transcriptional markers of TNBC.