Responsiveness to vedolizumab therapy in ulcerative colitis is associated with alterations in immune cell-cell communications

Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a major subtype of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), a spectrum of chronic intestinal disorders caused by dysregulated immune responses to gut microbiota. Although transcriptional and functional changes in a number of immune cell types have been implicated in the pathogenesis of IBD, the cellular interactions and signals that drive these changes have been less well-studied. Moreover, the precise mechanisms of action underlying many biologic therapies, including the anti-47 integrin antagonist vedolizumab, remain incompletely understood. Our study aimed to explore possible additional mechanisms through which vedolizumab acts. We performed Cellular Indexing of Transcriptomes and Epitopes by sequencing (CITE-seq) on peripheral blood and colon immune cells derived from patients with ulcerative colitis treated with the anti-47 integrin antagonist vedolizumab. We applied a previously published computational approach, NicheNet, to predict immune cell-cell interactions, revealing putative ligand-receptor pairs and key transcriptional changes downstream of these cell-cell communications (CCC).