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Therapeutic Potential of Regulatory T Cells for Stem Cell Regulation: Insights from Treg-Mediated Enhancement of Limbal Stem Cell Functions

ABSTRACT: Regulatory T cells (Tregs) play a key role in immunomodulation and tissue regeneration. Limbal stem cells (LSCs) maintain corneal epithelial homeostasis, and limbal stem cell deficiency (LSCD) leads to visual impairment. Current LSCD treatments face donor shortages and graft rejection risks. The present study explored Tregs’ therapeutic potential for LSCD in a mouse model of graded LSCD, and further explore the direct effect of Tregs on LSCs function by in vitro coculturing human-derived cells. Subconjunctival Tregs injection effectively treated mild and moderate LSCD in mouse models. Coculturing human LSCs with human Tregs promotes LSCs migration, proliferation, and stemness maintenance. Furthermore, amphiregulin (AREG), secreted by Tregs, was crucial to their therapeutic effects, as AREG-/- Tregs resulted in diminished efficacy on LSCD mice compared to wild-type Tregs. These findings highlighted Tregs as a promising treatment for LSCD, enhancing LSC function partially via AREG production.

ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens

PROVIDER: GSE291731 | GEO | 2025/04/16

REPOSITORIES: GEO

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Project description:Limbal stem cells (LSCs), known as corneal epithelial stem cells, are located at the basal epithelial layer of the corneal limbus and serve an important function in maintaining the homeostasis of the corneal epithelium. Several putative molecular markers of LSCs have been previously identified. However, the specificity of these markers remains largely controversial. To address this gap in the current understanding of LSCs, we performed a transcriptome profiling of heterogeneous corneal limbal basal cells using single-cell transcriptomics technology to identify LSCs and their exclusive markers. We isolated limbal basal cells from two young donors, constructed scRNA-seq libraries, generated RNA-sequencing data using the 10x Genomics platform, and then finally obtained the transcriptome of about 18,000 individual single-cells using Cell ranger (https://10xgenomics.com). Next, we performed quality control, filtering and data integration using Seurat package (https://satijalab.org/seurat), about 16,400 cells were retained for further downstream analysis such as dimensional reduction, unsupervised clustering, and Differentially expressed gene selection, trajectory analysis and visualization. We identified 11 unique clusters of cells assigned to a putative cell type based on published known biomarkers for differentiation, proliferation and putative epithelial stem cells. As a results, we found 2 Terminally Differentiated Cell (TDC), 3 Post-Mitotic Cell (PMC), 1 Transient Amplifying Cell (TAC), 2 Limbal Progenitor Cell (LPC), Putative Limbal Stem Cell (LSC) and 2 Melanocyte (MC) sub-cell type clusters. Furthermore, we confirmed the trajectory order of LSC differentiation for 9 clusters using Pseudotemporal and Functional PCA analysis. Lastly, we validated each assigned cell subtypes and determined their location in human corneal limbus tissue with 9 markers using RNAscope We were able to reveal the heterogeneity of corneal limbal basal epithelium by defining novel dynamic trajectories for cell types in a pseudotemporal manner. This approach allowed us to identify the distinct clusters of LSCs and progenitors with exclusively expressed markers, and might apply for translational research on regenerating a normal corneal epithelium and restoring vision.

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Therapeutic Potential of Regulatory T Cells for Stem Cell Regulation: Insights from Treg-Mediated Enhancement of Limbal Stem Cell Functions

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