Mucosal immune alterations at the early onset of tissue destruction in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease

In 11 control (non-used donors) and 11 COPD (end-stage) explant frozen lungs, 4 cylinders/cores were processed per lung for microCT and tissue transcriptomics. MicroCT was used to quantify tissue percentage and alveolar surface density to classify the COPD cores in mild, moderate and severe zones, as well as to quantify terminal bronchioles. Transcriptomics of each core assessed fold changes in innate and adaptive cells and pathway enrichment score between control and COPD cores. Immunostainings of immune cells was performed for validation. Overall design: We sampled multiple regions in human lungs collected following lung transplantation for severe COPD and determined the extent of emphysema using microCT quantitative imaging and tissue histology to classify them as early, progressive, or end-stage disease. We then performed RNA-seq profiling to determine gene expression at these selected stages and applied a linear mixed-effects model to identify differentially expressed genes. 24 control Samples from GSE184316 (GSM5583910-GSM5583933, PRJNA763978) are reanalyzed in this study.