Single-Cell transcriptomics comparison of nasal polyps in patients with AERD and CRSwNP.

Objective: We sought to obtain detailed information about transcriptional differences in epithelial cells and immune cell subsets present in polyps of aspirin-exacerbated respiratory disease and chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps. Methods: After enrichment for various immune subsets by flow cytometric sorting of polyp-derived cells, we performed transcriptomic profiling by employing single-cell RNA sequencing of all patients. Results: Transcriptomic profiling revealed that epithelial and mast cells not only complement one another in terms of gene expression associated with the 15-lipoxygenase pathway, but also show a clear type 2 associated inflammatory phenotype as identified by the upregulation of POSTN, CCL26 and IL13 in patients with aspirin-exacerbated respiratory disease. Cells sorted from AERD and CRSwNP biopsies after mechanical and enzymatic isolation were used to generate libraries for scRNA-seq. Such libraries were generated using the 10X Chromium Controller and Single Cell 3’ Library & Gel Bead Kit v2 (samples 1-9) and v3 (samples 10-19) according to the manufacturer’s protocol. ------------------------------------------------------------------- *** Authors state "Raw sequencing data is unavailable due to patient privacy concerns."