Interpretable inflammation landscape of circulating immune cells.
Laura Jiménez-Gracia1,2,3, Davide Maspero1, Sergio Aguilar-Fernández1,4,5,6
1Centro Nacional de Análisis Genómico, C/Baldiri Reixac 4, Barcelona, Spain.
Nature Medicine
|January 12, 2026
Summary
This study created a comprehensive single-cell atlas of inflammation in over 6.5 million immune cells from 1,047 patients. This resource advances understanding of inflammatory diseases and aids in developing new diagnostic tools.
Area of Science:
- Immunology
- Genomics
- Computational Biology
Background:
- Inflammation is crucial for homeostasis but detrimental when dysregulated.
- A holistic understanding of inflammation across diverse diseases remains elusive.
- Single-cell transcriptomics offers a powerful approach to dissect cellular inflammation.
Purpose of the Study:
- To delineate inflammatory processes in circulating immune cells across various diseases using single-cell transcriptomics.
- To build a comprehensive single-cell atlas of inflammation.
- To lay the foundation for a machine learning-based disease classification framework.
Main Methods:
- Leveraged single-cell transcriptomics.
- Analyzed over 6.5 million peripheral blood mononuclear cells from 1,047 patients across 19 diseases.
- Applied unsupervised and explainable machine learning techniques.
Main Results:
- Generated a comprehensive single-cell atlas of inflammation in circulating immune cells.
- Expanded knowledge on the biology of inflammation in immune-mediated diseases, infections, and cancers.
- Identified discriminative inflammation-related genes and charted altered molecular activity.
Conclusions:
- The study presents a rich resource for understanding immune cell inflammation.
- Circulating immune cells can serve as living biomarkers for inflammatory diseases.
- The findings support the development of a disease classification framework for inflammatory conditions.
