TY - JOUR T1 - The role of bone marrow-derived cells in the origin of liver cancer revealed by single-cell sequencing JF - Cancer Biology and Medicine JO - Cancer Biol Med SP - 142 LP - 153 DO - 10.20892/j.issn.2095-3941.2019.0369 VL - 17 IS - 1 AU - Lu Chen AU - Xianfu Yi AU - Piao Guo AU - Hua Guo AU - Ziye Chen AU - Chunyu Hou AU - Lisha Qi AU - Yongrong Wang AU - Chengwen Li AU - Peng Liu AU - Yucun Liu AU - Yuanfu Xu AU - Ning Zhang Y1 - 2020/02/15 UR - http://www.cancerbiomed.org/content/17/1/142.abstract N2 - Objective: Epithelial cancers often originate from progenitor cells, while the origin of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is still controversial. HCC, one of the deadliest cancers, is closely linked with liver injuries and chronic inflammation, which trigger massive infiltration of bone marrow-derived cells (BMDCs) during liver repair.Methods: To address the possible roles of BMDCs in HCC origination, we established a diethylnitrosamine (DEN)-induced HCC model in bone marrow transplanted mice. Immunohistochemistry and frozen tissue immunofluorescence were used to verify DEN-induced HCC in the pathology of the disease. The cellular origin of DEN-induced HCC was further studied by single cell sequencing, single-cell nested PCR, and immunofluorescence-fluorescence in situ hybridization.Results: Studies by using single cell sequencing and biochemical analysis revealed that HCC cells in these mice were coming from donor mice BMDCs, and not from recipient mice. Furthermore, the copy numbers of mouse orthologs of several HCC-related genes previously reported in human HCC were also altered in our mouse model. DEN-induced HCCs exhibited a similar histological phenotype and genomic profile as human HCCs.Conclusions: These results suggested that BMDCs are an important origin of HCC, which provide important clues to HCC prevention, detection, and treatments. ER -