Abstract C048: Single-cell RNA sequencing analysis in prostate cancer patients from African ancestry

Abstract

Abstract Prostate cancer is the second most common malignancy in men worldwide. Men of African ancestry (AA) have a higher incidence rate and increased prostate cancer mortality, present with more advanced disease at earlier ages, than men of European ancestry (EA). Aside from socioeconomic factors driving this disparity, genomic factors also greatly contribute to the differences in the incidence and mortality rates. Despite recent advancements in comparisons of genomic alterations, a comprehensive transcriptomic and epigenomic landscape of tumors from AA prostate cancer patients has yet to be developed. Droplet-based single-cell technologies have evolved and now enabled the profiling of transcriptome, epigenome, and chromatin organization from complex tissues at single-cell resolution. To identify cell populations with distinctive molecular features and cell-type specific transcriptional programs and cell states from AA prostate cancer patients, we performed single-cell RNA sequencing for 11 EA and 6 AA prostate cancer patients. By investigating the differentially expressed genes in a cell-type-specific manner between AA and EA patients, we found that endothelial and myeloid cell populations showed significant enrichment of inflammatory pathways in AA patients. In the analysis, we also identified a group of heat shock protein family genes that were upregulated in AA patients in multiple cell types. Then, ligand-receptor interactions between tumor cells and immune microenvironments from AA and EA prostate cancer patients identified significant interactions involving frizzled receptors (FZD) that were enriched in AA patients. Overall, the transcriptomic differences may reveal oncogenic mechanisms in AA prostate cancer patients compared to EA patients. Citation Format: Hanbing Song, Yih-An Chen, William Yue, Hannah N.W. Weinstein, Paul Allegakoen, Heiko Yang, Emory Kim, Julia Pham, Keliana Hui, Matthew R. Cooperberg, Franklin W. Huang. Single-cell RNA sequencing analysis in prostate cancer patients from African ancestry [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 16th AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2023 Sep 29-Oct 2;Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2023;32(12 Suppl):Abstract nr C048.