摘要：Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) equips breast cancer cells for metastasis and treatment resistance . However, detection, inhibition, and elimination of EMT-undergoing cells is challenging due to the intrinsic heterogeneity of cancer cells and the phenotypic diversity of EMT programs . We comprehensively profiled EMT transition phenotypes in four non-cancerous human mammary epithelial cell lines using a flow cytometry surface marker screen, RNA sequencing, and mass cytometry. EMT was induced in the HMLE and MCF10A cell lines and in the HMLE-Twist-ER and HMLE-Snail-ER cell lines by prolonged exposure to TGFβ1 or 4-hydroxytamoxifen, respectively. Each cell line exhibited a spectrum of EMT transition phenotypes, which we compared to the steady-state phenotypes of fifteen luminal, HER2-positive, and basal breast cancer cell lines . Our data provide multiparametric insights at the single-cell level into the phenotypic diversity of EMT at different time points and in four human cellular models . These insights are valuable to better understand the complexity of EMT, to compare EMT transitions between the cellular models used here, and for the design of EMT time course experiments .
