Single-cell RNA sequencing of a treatment-naive human high-grade serous ovarian carcinoma

To characterise the macrophage compartment of human ovarian cancer at single-cell resolution and to examine the expression of m6A regulators within it, we performed microwell-based single-cell RNA sequencing (SeekOne MM) on a treatment-naive primary high-grade serous ovarian carcinoma specimen.

Unsupervised clustering resolved epithelial, stromal, endothelial, stem, T and B cell populations together with a macrophage compartment, which was further subdivided into M1-like, M2-like, M-FYN and M-IFI30 subsets. The m6A writer WTAP and its downstream target MYO1G were both enriched in the M1-like macrophage subset. Together with the in vitro and in vivo experiments reported in the associated study, these data support a model in which WTAP-mediated m6A modification stabilises MYO1G mRNA, promotes M1 polarisation of tumour-associated macrophages, and thereby restrains the proliferation, migration and epithelial-mesenchymal transition of ovarian cancer cells.