Chunbo Li

Occult vaginal cancer recurrence after hysterectomy: a case report and literature review

Vaginal cancer is a rare disease of the lower genital tract. We present the case of a 54-year-old woman with occult vaginal cancer after hysterectomy for cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) III. Despite persistently negative cytology and colposcopy results, a lesion was finally detected by vagino-recto-abdominal examination and she underwent radical parametrectomy and lymph node dissection. We consider the possibility that transabdominal suturing of the vaginal cuff after hysterectomy may reduce the ability to detect subsequent vaginal lesions, and discuss the benefits of a vaginal suture approach. We recommend that suturing the vagina apex transvaginally instead of transabdominally would benefit patients during follow-up.

Diverse intratumoral heterogeneity and immune microenvironment of two HPV‐related cervical cancer types revealed by single‐cell RNA sequencing

AbstractCervical squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and adenocarcinoma (AD) are the main histological types of human papillomavirus‐related cervical cancer. However, there are few reports on cell type‐specific molecular differences between SCC and AD. Here, we used unbiased droplet‐based single‐cell RNA sequencing to elucidate the cellular differences between SCC and AD in tumor heterogeneity, and tumor microenvironment (TME). A total of 61 723 cells from three SCC and three AD patients, were collected and divided into nine cell types. Epithelial cells exhibited high intra‐ and interpatient heterogeneity and functional diversity. Signaling pathways, such as epithelial‐to‐mesenchymal‐transition (EMT), hypoxia and inflammatory response were upregulated in SCC, while cell cycle‐related signaling pathways were highly enriched in AD. SCC was associated with high infiltration of cytotoxicity CD8 T, effector memory CD8 T, proliferative natural killer (NK), and CD160+ NK cells as well as tumor‐associated macrophages (TAMs) with high major histocompatibility complex‐II genes. AD exhibited a high proportion of naive CD8 T, naive CD4 T, Treg CD4, central memory CD8, and TAMs with immunomodulatory functions. Additionally, we also observed that the majority of cancer‐associated fibroblasts (CAFs) were from AD, and participated in inflammation regulation, while SCC‐derived CAFs exhibited similar functions to tumor cells, such as EMT and hypoxia. This study revealed the widespread reprogramming of multiple cell populations in SCC and AD, dissected the cellular heterogeneity and characteristics in TME, and proposed potential therapeutic strategies for CC, such as targeted therapy and immunotherapy.

Single‐cell transcriptomics provides insights into the origin and immune microenvironment of cervical precancerous lesions