Project description:The aim was to characterize the proteomic alterations in synovial fibroblasts from patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis, with or without prior priming with inflamed synovial fluid. Synovial fibroblasts were isolated from the synovial fluid of patients with oligoarticular juvenile idiopathic arthritis via passaging. For the experiment, they were primed or not with a pool of 20% of pooled synovial fluid from patients for 48hrs.
Project description:Knee osteoarthritis (KOA), as a degenerative multifactorial disease, affects the quality of life and mental health of patients, and also brings a huge socioeconomic burden. Treating synovitis have shown promise as anti-inflammatory therapeutics in mitigating OA symptoms and disease progression. Here, by analysing synovial single-cell sequencing (scRNA-seq) data from KOA, we found that synovial fibroblasts (FLS) in OA synovium showed a distinct pro-inflammatory phenotype. We collected synovial tissue from patients with clinical OA as well as from healthy donors, and histological examination was consistent with findings in scRNA-seq. Inspired by recent cross-tissue fibroblast lineage studies, we identified by sequencing that healthy FLS in synovial tissues share transcriptome-level similarities with dermal fibroblasts (DFb). Subsequently, we revealed the local as well as systemic distribution of intra-articular injected DFbs by constructing/extracting two types of rat fibroblasts (luciferase DFbs as well as GFP DFbs). The results demonstrate that DFbs can be locally retained in the synovium for up to three weeks following targeted engrafting on it. And intra-articular injection does not result in DFbs migration to vital organs or the occurrence of histological changes in these organs. A rat model of KOA was constructed by anterior cruciate ligament transection (ACLT) in order to study the therapeutic effect of DFbs on KOA. After injection, the rats showed improvement in painful gait. In addition, histological as well as imaging results showed reduced synovitis and improvement in articular cartilage. Finally we verified the protective effect of DFbs on cytokine-stimulated chondrocytes in a co-culture system.
Project description:This study employs scRNA-seq to characterize Efhd1⁺ tdTomato⁺ telocyte-like cells isolated from knee synovial tissues. By comparing their transcriptional profiles to fibroblasts, we aim to delineate distinct cellular phenotypes and understand telocyte heterogeneity across tissue microenvironments. Our analysis reveals unique gene expression signatures defining telocytes providing insights into their potential roles in tissue homeostasis and fibrosis.