Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics characterisation of the immunological landscape in the healthy and PSC human liver

Primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC) is a rare liver disease characterized by chronic inflammation and irreparable damage to the bile ducts. Due to a limited understanding of the underlying pathogenesis of disease, there remains a paucity of treatment options. As such, we sequenced healthy and diseased livers to compare the activity, interactions, and localization of immune and non-immune cells. This revealed that outside PSC scar regions, hepatocytes are transitioning to bile duct cells, whereas within the scars, there is an accumulation of immune cells. Of these cells, macrophages that typically contribute to tissue repair were enriched in immunoregulatory genes and were less responsive to stimulation. These cells are likely involved in maintaining hepatic inflammation and could be targeted in novel therapeutic development. Spatial gene expression profiling by high throughput sequencing The submitter states that the sample C73-D1 has already been uploaded as GSM5616008 that was uploaded as part of GSE185477. The GSM7697871 (C73_D1_VISIUM) records were generated for the convenient retrieval of the complete raw data from SRA.