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Review
. 2024 Dec 19:15:1499301.
doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2024.1499301. eCollection 2024.

Spatial transcriptomics in breast cancer: providing insight into tumor heterogeneity and promoting individualized therapy

Junsha An  1   2   3 , Yajie Lu  1 , Yuxi Chen  1 , Yuling Chen  1 , Zhaokai Zhou  4 , Jianping Chen  5 , Cheng Peng  2 , Ruizhen Huang  3 , Fu Peng  1   6
Affiliations
Review

Spatial transcriptomics in breast cancer: providing insight into tumor heterogeneity and promoting individualized therapy

Junsha An et al. Front Immunol. .

Abstract

A comprehensive understanding of tumor heterogeneity, tumor microenvironment and the mechanisms of drug resistance is fundamental to advancing breast cancer research. While single-cell RNA sequencing has resolved the issue of "temporal dynamic expression" of genes at the single-cell level, the lack of spatial information still prevents us from gaining a comprehensive understanding of breast cancer. The introduction and application of spatial transcriptomics addresses this limitation. As the annual technical method of 2020, spatial transcriptomics preserves the spatial location of tissues and resolves RNA-seq data to help localize and differentiate the active expression of functional genes within a specific tissue region, enabling the study of spatial location attributes of gene locations and cellular tissue environments. In the context of breast cancer, spatial transcriptomics can assist in the identification of novel breast cancer subtypes and spatially discriminative features that show promise for individualized precise treatment. This article summarized the key technical approaches, recent advances in spatial transcriptomics and its applications in breast cancer, and discusses the limitations of current spatial transcriptomics methods and the prospects for future development, with a view to advancing the application of this technology in clinical practice.

Keywords: breast cancer; heterogeneity; individualized precise treatment; spatial transcriptomics; tumor microenvironment.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Advantages and disadvantages of different spatial transcriptomics technologies. (The green color shows the advantages of the technology, while the yellow color shows the disadvantages.) (A) Laser capture microdissection-based approaches. (B) In situ hybridization-based approaches. (C) In situ sequencing-based approaches. (D) Next-generation sequencing-based approaches.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Experimentation workflow of the spatial transcriptomics. (Created with BioRender.com).
Figure 3
Figure 3
Application of ST in the field of breast cancer research. (Created with BioRender.com).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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