Researchers proposed that defining the pathogenic diversity of rheumatoid arthritis may improve therapeutic efficacy among this patient population, according to a recent study published by Zhang et al in Nature. Investigators used multimodal single-cell RNA sequencing and surface protein data coupled with the histology of synovial tissue to profile the full spectrum of cells in the inflamed synovium of 79 patients with rheumatoid arthritis, with the goal of deconstructing the cell states and pathways, cytokines, risk genes, and histology and serology metrics relevant to the disease’s pathogenic heterogeneity. They then built a single-cell atlas of rheumatoid arthritis synovial tissue incorporating over 314,000 cells and stratified the tissue into six cell-type abundance phenotypes to demonstrate the heterogeneity of synovial inflammation, including those enriched for T and B cells as well as those lacking lymphocytes. The researchers hope that their new atlas can offer new insights into rheumatoid arthritis pathology and treatment responses in this patient population.
January 18, 2024