Sclerotic-type chronic graft-versus-host disease exhibits enrichment of Th1 and TSLP-OX40 cytokines

In this study we performed the first global RNA-seq analysis in pediatric to young-adult patients with sclerotic-type graft-versus-host disease/scGvHD (n=7), age- and sex-matched to 8 healthy controls and 10 patients with atopic dermatitis/AD. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were defined based on fold changes/FCH>1.5 and false discovery rate/FDR<0.05 criteria. We found robust and significant Th1 (e.g. CXCR9/10/11, IFNG) and OX40-skewing in ScGvHD (e.g. OX40L, TLSP, IL-33) that sometimes exceeded that in AD and was validated on RT-PCR. RNA-seq data was profiled from skin biopsies of 7 pediatric/young-adult patients with sclerotic-type chronic graft-versus-host disease, age- and sex- matched to 10 patients with moderate-to-severe atopic dermatitis (lesional and non-lesional) and 8 healthy controls.