May 20, Vice Prof. Gang Hu from School of Statistics and Data Science of Nankai University, cooperating with the team of Vice Director Jiangping Song from Fuwai Hospital of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, the team of Prof. Mingyao Li from Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology of University of Pennsylvania and the team of Prof. Yu Zhang from National Institute of Biological Sciences and Tsinghua Institute of Multidisciplinary Biomedical Research of Tsinghua University, published an online article entitled “Single-Cell RNA Sequencing to Dissect the Immunological Network of Autoimmune Myocarditis” on Circulation in “Original Research Articles”.

Autoimmune myocarditis is one of the important causes of heart transplantation. Due to the lack of understanding of immune cell infiltration in autoimmune myocarditis, there is a lack of effective drug treatment. This study firstly described the characteristics of cardiac immune microenvironment in mice in different stages of autoimmune myocarditis through single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) analysis and found that an inflammation-associated macrophage cluster was identified in which the expression of Hif1a-regulated genes was upregulated. Additionally, PX-478 (Hif1a inhibitor) could alleviate the inflammatory responses of the different EAM phases. This Hif1a inhibitor could effectively inhibit the inflammatory response of mice heart. HIF1A was expressed at high levels in acute autoimmune myocarditis patients, so this Hif1a inhibitor may serve as a potential therapeutic target in the clinic.

This research is the fruit of an in-depth cooperation among different disciplines. It combines data statistical analysis with clinical disease data, giving full play to the advantages of different disciplines, and solving the most concerned scientific problems in the clinical practice. With the rapid development of sequencing technology, life science and medical research have entered the era of big data, big platform and big discovery in which statistics will play an increasingly important role. At the same time, it is necessary to deepen the cooperation between data science and clinical medicine, and to promote the application and the vigorous development of disciplines.

The Journal Circulation (IF=23) is a top medical journal published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins for the American Heart Association, which IF (impact factor) ranks first in the field of Cardiac & Cardiovascular Systems.

(Reported by Zixiong Ren, Translated by Yuchen Shi, Edited by Davide Francolino and JianjingYun)