Cited by 48Single-cell and spatial transcriptomicsGene expression and cancer classificationTopological and Geometric Data Analysis

Uncovering axes of variation among single-cell cancer specimens

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Chen, William S., Zivanovic, Nevena, van Dijk, David, Wolf, Guy, Bodenmiller, Bernd, Krishnaswamy, Smita·2020·Nature Methods

Published version of a preprint

Abstract

While several tools have been developed to map axes of variation among individual cells, no analogous approaches exist for identifying axes of variation among multicellular biospecimens profiled at single-cell resolution. For this purpose, we developed 'phenotypic earth mover's distance' (PhEMD). PhEMD is a general method for embedding a 'manifold of manifolds', in which each datapoint in the higher-level manifold (of biospecimens) represents a collection of points that span a lower-level manifold (of cells). We apply PhEMD to a newly generated drug-screen dataset and demonstrate that PhEMD uncovers axes of cell subpopulational variation among a large set of perturbation conditions. Moreover, we show that PhEMD can be used to infer the phenotypes of biospecimens not directly profiled. Applied to clinical datasets, PhEMD generates a map of the patient-state space that highlights sources of patient-to-patient variation. PhEMD is scalable, compatible with leading batch-effect correction techniques and generalizable to multiple experimental designs.

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  • Several distance measures for scRNA-seq have been explored, including Wasserstein distance, maximum mean discrepancy, neighborhood-based measures, and energy distance.

    “Multiple distance measures for scRNA-seq have been explored by the single-cell community in recent years, including Wasserstein distance computed in an optimal transport framework22,23, maximum mean discrepancy24, neighborhood-based measures17,18, and energy distance (E-distance)20.”

    From scPerturb: harmonized single-cell perturbation data (2024) · cites this paper as [22]

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Research works printed but not linked: 4

  1. [32]Williams CKI & Seeger M in Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems Vol. 13 (eds Leen TK) 682– 688 (MIT Press, 2001).
  2. [45]Wang F & Guibas L in Computer Vision—ECCV 2012 Vol. 7572 (eds Fitzgibbon A et al.) 442– 455 (Springer, 2012).
  3. [52]Zivanovic N Jacobs A & Bodenmiller B in High-Dimensional Single Cell Analysis Vol. 377 (eds Fienberg HG & Nolan GP) 95– 109 (Springer, 2013).
  4. [55]Levina E & Bickel PJ in Advances in Neural Information Processing Systems Vol. 17 (eds Saul LK) 777– 784 (MIT Press, 2005).

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Authors
Chen, W. S., Zivanovic, N., van Dijk, D., Wolf, G., Bodenmiller, B., & Krishnaswamy, S.
Affiliations
  • Yale University (US)
  • University of Zurich (CH)
  • Université de Montréal (CA)
Corresponding author
  • Bodenmiller, Bernd
  • Krishnaswamy, Smita
Venue
Nature Methods
Published
2020-01-13
Volume
17
Issue
3
Pages
302-310
ISSN
  • 1548-7091 (ISSN-L)
  • 1548-7105
OpenAlex
W2998995887
Cited by
48
References
73
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 11 · 2023: 10 · 2022: 7 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 4
FWCI
2.43
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Nature Methods (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (acceptedVersion, other-oa)
  • PubMed Central (acceptedVersion)
  • Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
  • Zurich Open Repository and Archive (University of Zurich)
Funders
  • U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (R01GM135929, T35DK104689)
  • Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung (144874)
  • National Institutes of Health (UL1TR001863)
  • National Institute of General Medical Sciences (R01GM130847, R01GM135929)
  • National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (UC4DK108132, T35DK104689)
  • National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Gene expression and cancer classification
  • Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Computational Theory and Mathematics › Topological and Geometric Data Analysis
Keywords
drug screening, patient-to-patient variation, batch effect correction, cancer phenotypes
MeSH terms
Algorithms, Animals, Antineoplastic Agents, Biopsy, Breast Neoplasms, Cytophotometry, Drug Screening Assays, Antitumor, Enzyme Inhibitors, Female, Humans, Image Interpretation, Computer-Assisted, Neoplasm Metastasis, Pattern Recognition, Automated, Phenotype, Recombinant Proteins, Software, Mammary Neoplasms, Animal, Cluster Analysis, Transforming Growth Factor beta, Mice, Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition, Single-Cell Analysis

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