Abstract LB-326: Full-Length mRNA transcriptome analysis of matched circulating tumor and immune cells from breast cancer subjects
Authors: Ramalingam Naveen , Lee Yifang , Szpankowski Lukasz , Leyrat Anne , Fowler Brian , Angeles Ninez Delos , Sanada Chad , Wu Andrew , Yap Yoon Sim , West Jay , Bhagat Ali Asgar , Hukari Kyle , Lynch Mark , King David 
Published: August 2019

Background Understanding the genetic heterogeneity of circulating immune and tumors cells at single-cell resolution will enable one to decipher the interplay between cancer and immune cells, and ultimately lead to better design of immunotherapy assays. Marker-free methods for isolation of cells are attractive because they provide an opportunity to analyze a larger set of these cells that may otherwise be missed due to variable or no expression of protein (marker) markers. Integration of the Biolidics ClearCell® FX System and the Fluidigm® Polaris™ system enabled us not only to develop a marker-free workflow to isolate immune and circulating tumor cells (CTCs) but also to seamlessly prepare amplified cDNA from immune and CTCs for full-length mRNA-seq analysis.

Method and Results The ClearCell FX System processes blood samples and isolates CTCs in a marker-free manner. During the CTC isolation process the immune cells are separated from CTCs on the microfluidic device. To differentiate larger blood cells from CTCs, we stained the enriched cells with Alexa Fluor® 647-conjugated CD45 and CD31 to identify leukocytes and endothelial cells, respectively. Calcein AM (live cell marker) and CellTracker™ Orange (universal cell marker) were added to identify live cells. Different enrichment strategies on Polaris allowed us to either specifically select for CTCs (live+, universal cell marker+, CD45-, CD31-) or immune cells (live+, universal cell marker+, CD45+). The enriched cells were then lysed, mRNA were reverse-transcribed, and cDNA were preamplified on a Polaris integrated fluidic circuit (IFC). Sequencing libraries were generated (off-IFC) using the Nextera® XT DNA library prep protocol and sequenced on Illumina® MiSeq™ systems. We successfully profiled full-length mRNA of 81 CTCs from stage III and IV subjects. Based on hormone receptor status, these six subjects were categorized as three types: (1) ER-/PR-/HER2- (triple-negative breast cancer; n=1), (2) ER+/PR+/HER2- (n=3), and (3) ER+/PR+/HER2- (n=2). For immune cell comparative analysis, we included CD45+ (FACS-sorted) from healthy donor. Unsupervised hierarchal clustering of gene expression data showed clustering by subject with a unique set of genes expressed by triple-negative breast cancer only. Heterogeneity was noted in immune cells from subjects at baseline (pretreatment), under treatment with drugs and a healthy subject without cancer. Using TraCeR computational method, we successfully reconstructed full-length, paired T cell receptor (TCR) sequences from CD45+ single-cell RNA sequence data from breast cancer subjects.

Conclusion We present the feasibility of integrating two microfluidics platforms to isolate circulating immune and tumor cells for transcriptome and functional study. Our data suggests that the heterogeneity of immune and cancer cells can be elucidated from single-cell mRNA sequencing data and full-length, paired T cell receptor sequences can be reconstructed from immune cells of breast cancer subjects.

Citation Format: Naveen Ramalingam, Yifang Lee, Lukasz Szpankowski, Anne Leyrat, Brian Fowler, Ninez Delos Angeles, Chad Sanada, Andrew Wu, Yoon Sim Yap, Jay West, Ali Asgar Bhagat, Kyle Hukari, Mark Lynch, David King. Full-Length mRNA transcriptome analysis of matched circulating tumor and immune cells from breast cancer subjects [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2019; 2019 Mar 29-Apr 3; Atlanta, GA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2019;79(13 Suppl):Abstract nr LB-326.