Single cell approaches to understand environmental impacts on aggressive breast cancers

Abstract

Breast cancer is a heterogeneous suite of diseases, with likely strong, but still poorly understood, environmental etiologies. New advances in single cell methods are now poised to help us understand how environmental exposures, such as air and water pollutants, diet, personal and consumer care products, and social factors, may promote the development of aggressive breast cancers. In this review, we describe how dissociated and spatial single cell transcriptomic analyses can be used to advance our understanding how our environment impacts breast carcinogenesis through the view of frameworks such as the Hallmarks of Cancer and the Key Characteristics of Carcinogens.