Project description:Plastic pollution poses a universal yet understudied environmental risk to the immune system. Once ingested, nano- and microplastic particles (MNPs) can translocate from the gut into internal organs, likely via circulation. In humans, MNPs have been detected in macrophages within carotid artery plaques, suggesting that these highly phagocytic cells, may also serve as key targets for MNPs under homeostatic conditions. Kupffer cells (KCs), the liver-resident macrophages, play a crucial role in liver homeostasis by regulating metabolism, clearing opsonized target cells, and serving as the first line of defence against bacteria. Residing within the liver sinusoids, they continuously monitor the bloodstream, efficiently capturing and eliminating pathogens and circulating particles to maintain immune and metabolic balance5. It remains unknown whether KCs efficiently capture and store MNPs and how this might affect liver function. Here, we utilize a mouse model of chronic plastic exposure to assess how ingested MNP influence KC core functions, and thereby also liver function. We show that KCs are the primary hepatic target of MNPs and that 12 weeks of exposure alters their transcriptome and impairs phagocytic capacity, leading to dysregulated liver metabolism. Microplastics, but not nanoplastics, exposure reduces KC-mediated clearance of circulating cells and bacteria and exacerbates diet-induced obesity. These findings suggest that chronic MNP exposure disrupts tissue-specific macrophage functions in a size-dependent manner, with distinct long-term consequences for liver function and overall health.
Project description:To spatially contextualize and extend disease-associated cellular states, we generated Xenium spatial transcriptomics data from FFPE lung tissue of 38 participants spanning the COPD disease spectrum. Four tissue microarrays (TMA1–TMA4) were profiled using a custom 480-gene Xenium panel. These data capture the in situ organization of inflammatory, regenerative, and remodeling cell states and reveal spatially localized niches and patterns of cell–cell communications relevant to COPD pathology. This dataset provides high-resolution spatial context for characterizing microenvironmental structure and cell–cell interactions in COPD lung tissue.
Project description:Targeted spatial transcriptomic profiling was performed on seven formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded pleural mesothelioma tumor samples from four cases using the 10x Genomics Xenium platform. The Xenium Human Immuno-Oncology panel supplemented with 100 additional custom genes selected from known pleural mesothelioma biomarkers and single-cell RNA-seq-derived marker genes was used. Raw and processed Xenium files are provided for each sample. To ensure data integrity with downloaded Xenium files, md5 checksums are provided in 'Xenium_GEO.md5'. This dataset is part of a multi-modality study including matched scRNA-seq, bulk RNA-seq, and Xenium spatial transcriptomics generated from overlapping pleural mesothelioma samples. Related controlled-access sequencing data are available in dbGaP under accession phs004285.
Project description:Lactate transport is an important regulator of cellular metabolism and may contribute to fibroblast activation and extracellular matrix remodeling during pulmonary fibrosis. To define the spatial transcriptional landscape associated with pharmacologic inhibition of lactate transport during fibrotic lung remodeling, we performed spatial transcriptomic profiling of mouse lung tissue using the 10x Genomics Xenium Analyzer. Lung sections from mice with bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis treated with inhibitors of monocarboxylate transport were analyzed using the Xenium Prime 5K Mouse Pan Tissue & Pathways panel to generate cell-resolved spatial gene expression maps. The resulting dataset provides spatially resolved transcriptional profiles across epithelial, stromal, endothelial, and immune compartments of the injured lung, enabling analysis of fibroblast activation states and spatial microenvironments associated with fibrotic remodeling.
Project description:We performed Xenium single cell transcriptomics on 4 plaques with matched controls (8 samples in total) and 8 additional plaques. A total of 16 samples was sequenced with two panels each.
Project description:Emerging imaging spatial transcriptomics (iST) platforms and coupled analytical methods can recover cell-to-cell interactions, groups of spatially covarying genes, and gene signatures associated with pathological features, and are thus particularly well-suited for applications in formalin fixed paraffin embedded (FFPE) tissues. Here, we benchmark the performance of three commercial iST platforms—10X Xenium, Vizgen MERSCOPE, and Nanostring CosMx—on serial sections from tissue microarrays (TMAs) containing 17 tumor and 16 normal tissue types for both relative technical and biological performance. On matched genes, we find that Xenium consistently generates higher transcript counts per gene without sacrificing specificity. Xenium and CosMx measure RNA transcripts in concordance with orthogonal single-cell transcriptomics. All three platforms can perform spatially resolved cell typing with varying degrees of sub-clustering capabilities, with Xenium and CosMx finding slightly more clusters than MERSCOPE, albeit with different false discovery rates and cell segmentation error frequencies. Taken together, our analyses provide a comprehensive benchmark to guide the choice of iST method as researchers design studies with precious samples in this rapidly evolving field.
Project description:To investigate the effecs of commensal papillomavirus immunity on the homeostasis of highly mutated normal skin, spatial transcriptomics (Xenium, 10x Genomics, Pleasanton, CA) was performed on SKH-1 mouse back skin. The mice were treated with mouse papillomavirus (MmuPV1) or virus-like particles (VLP), followed by UV exposure for 25 weeks.
Project description:Xenium-based spatial transcriptomics was performed to characterize cellular heterogeneity and spatial organization in muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC). Xenium enabled high-resolution in situ mapping of selected gene expression at single-cell resolution in formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) tissue sections. Together, these data provide complementary insights into tumor cell states, lineage programs, and their spatial relationships with the tumor microenvironment, including immune and stromal components. This dataset enables investigation of tumor heterogeneity, lineage plasticity, and spatially resolved cell–cell interactions in MIBC.
Project description:Cellular plasticity is a hallmark of rare Claudin-low (CL) and metaplastic (MBC) breast cancer subtypes, with a documented overlap whose exact extent is yet unknown, and which are associated to resistance and poor survival. We used spatial transcriptomics to further characterise these plastic subtypes, respectively defined molecularly and histopathologically. We identified 3 putative CL tumours (CL-like) and 4 genomically unstable TNBC samples via molecular analyses, combined with 4 MBCs identified by a breast pathologist.