PDPN-expressing cell populations in glioblastoma. (A) Violin plot demonstrates the heterogeneous expression of PDPN among cell populations within individual GBMs. (B) t-SNE analysis captures the distinctiveness of PDPN⁺ and PDPN⁻ cell subpopulations of 5 individual GBMs. These cellular subsets, comprising individual cells originating from different GBM tumors, exhibit transcriptional similarities. PDPN expression was ranked by quartiles Q1 to Q4 in an increasing order of expression. (C) Pathway enrichment analysis shows the top 10 enriched pathways in cells with the highest PDPN expression (Q4) compared with those with the lowest PDPN expression (Q1). Of note is the preponderance of coagulation and inflammatory pathways according to MSigDB and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) gene sets. (D) GSEA plot showing pronounced enrichment of Hallmark Coagulation genes in cells with high PDPN expression (Q4) in the scRNA-seq data set compared with those with low PDPN expression (Q1). (E) This observation persists when analyzing The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) bulk tumor samples (right panel); Hallmark Coagulation genes are similarly enriched in tumors with high PDPN expression (Q4) compared with those with low expression (Q1).