Two research teams from the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine and their collaborators have produced a detailed cell atlas of an entire salivary gland tumor in a mouse model, mapping individual cells throughout the tumor and its surrounding tissue. The "single cell" approach, recently described in Nature Communications, has provided key insights about cellular composition changes through the earliest stages of cancer development.
A solid tumor is not, as many might assume, a lump of cells that are all the same. Rather it is mix of many different cell types, including a variety of stromal and immune cells besides the actual tumor cells.
Further research is required to verify that individual cells are transforming through these stages, and explore the cellular and molecular interactions driving tumor growth. The team anticipates the approach they've demonstrated here can be applied to other cancer types as well.
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