The Atlas of Immune Infiltrates in Islet Cell Allo-transplantation

Islet transplantation to treat the late stage of T1DM patients has made some inspiring success recently in clinical trials. However, most of patients underwent a decline of islet cell graft in one to three years due to chronic immune rejection. Although the mechanisms of immune cells including macrophages, dendritic cells (DCs), neutrophils, natural killer cells (NKs), B cells, T cells that mediate immune rejection have been investigated, the overall characteristics of immune infiltrates in islet allografts remain unclear. Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has provided us with new opportunities to study the molecular characteristics of the immune microenvironment in islet transplants. In the present study, we used scRNA-seq to comprehensively analyze the immune heterogeneity in islet graft, and compared the variances regarding to transcriptomal profiling and immune atlas between syngeneic islet transplantation and allograft. Overall design: We performed single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) on islet cell allograft (Balb/c islets to C57bl/6 recipients) and syngeneic graft (C57bl/6 islets to C57bl/6 recipients) to identify the comprehensive cell components and variations that are related to graft rejection. 7 days after transplantation, the grafts were harvested and subjected to 10X Genomics pipeline barcoding, library preparation, and sequencing.