Frontiers in immunology
A full-thickness spatial transcriptomics atlas of medically refractory ulcerative colitis identifies niche signatures associated with biologic non-response
By Bai Q, Li R, Liu Z and 17 others.
Abstract
Background
Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic mucosal immune disorder in which 30-50% of patients fail biologic therapy, yet the full-thickness immune architecture of medically refractory disease and reliable tissue-level markers of treatment response remain undefined.
Methods
Using 10x Visium HD spatial transcriptomics (16-µm bins; 615,274 bins), we generated a full-thickness spatial atlas of surgically resected colon from patients with medically refractory UC (n=3) and controls (n=3), integrating niche-stratified differential expression, spatial cell-cell communication, SCENIC regulon inference and single-sample GSEA with immunofluorescence and DSS-colitis flow cytometry.
