scCancer: a package for automated processing of single cell RNA-seq data in cancer

Abstract

SummaryMolecular heterogeneities bring great challenges for cancer diagnosis and treatment. Recent advance in single cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) technology make it possible to study cancer transcriptomic heterogeneities at single cell level. Here, we develop an R package named scCancer which focuses on processing and analyzing scRNA-seq data for cancer research. Except basic data processing steps, this package takes several special considerations for cancer-specific features. Firstly, the package introduced comprehensive quality control metrics. Secondly, it used a data-driven machine learning algorithm to accurately identify major cancer microenvironment cell populations. Thirdly, it estimated a malignancy score to classify malignant (cancerous) and non-malignant cells. Then, it analyzed intra-tumor heterogeneities by key cellular phenotypes (such as cell cycle and stemness) and gene signatures. Finally, a user-friendly graphic report was generated for all the analyses.\n\nAvailabilityhttp://lifeome.net/software/sccancer/.\n\nContactjgu@tsinghua.edu.cn