Single-cell sequencing-based technology reveals differences in four animal models of pulmonary fibrosis

Pulmonary fibrosis is a progressive interstitial lung disease characterised by a progressive loss of lung function. It can occur as a result of occupational or medical exposures, genetic defects, trauma or acute lung injury leading to fibroproliferative acute respiratory distress syndrome, or it can occur in an idiopathic manner. The pathogenesis of each form of pulmonary fibrosis remains unclear. A variety of animal models have been developed to better understand the pathogenesis of pulmonary fibrosis. It has been shown that animal models of pulmonary fibrosis rely heavily on severe adverse effects induced by a variety of drugs, such as bleomycin, amiodarone, lipopolysaccharide and silica. The construction of animal models plays a key role in our understanding of the molecular mechanisms underlying the pathogenesis of PF, in outlining patient-specific pathology and in developing therapeutic strategies. However, the differences between models of pulmonary fibrosis induced by different drugs have rarely been investigated. Therefore, in this paper we performed single-cell sequencing analysis of animal models constructed from four drugs. The characteristics of the changes in the number of epithelial cells and macrophages and their functional enrichment in each model were summarised, and it was deduced that the model induced by lipopolysaccharide was mainly focused on the inflammatory damage stage of pulmonary fibrosis, the model induced by amiodarone on the regeneration stage of persistent failure, and the model induced by bleomycin and silica on the fibrotic stage of pulmonary fibrosis. Overall design: Our experiments were divided into: control group (C), bleomycin group (BLM), lipopolysaccharide group (LPS), amiodarone group (AM), and silica group (SIO2). Five rats in each group were given free choice of sterile food and water and maintained on a 12-hour light/dark cycle