Profiling the peripheral immune response to TNF-alpha stimulation in patients with untreated juvenile idiopathic arthritis using scRNAseq

We report the application of next-generation sequencing tehcnologies to profile the effects of tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) treatment on the transcriptomes of cells derived from juvenile idopathic arthritis (JIA) patients and healthy control subjects. Whole blood from de-identified subects with JIA was collected following children's provided assent and parental signed consent. Controls included healthy adults under the age of 25 years without any medical conditions or family history of autoimmune disease. All study procedures were approved by the Emory IRB. Blood samples from each subject was then separated into two aliquots, with one supplemented with TNFα. After 24hr ex-vivo stimulation, PBMCs were isolated and subject to cDNA library sequencing on a NextSeq 550. Peripheral blood single-cell mRNA profiles for 6 JIA patients and 2 healthy controls, with each subject having a corresponding unstimulated and a 24 TNFα ex-vivo stimulated sample.