ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Autoimmune and Autoinflammatory Disorders : Autoimmune Disorders
This article is part of the Research TopicAutoimmune Glomerular Diseases: From Molecular Mechanisms to Precision TherapiesView all 6 articles
Glomerular cell atlas of multi-disease model revealed the characteristic changes of glomerular cell subtypes in diseases
Provisionally accepted
- 1Children‘s Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, Chongqing, China
- 2Affiliated Hospital of Chengde Medical University, Chengde, China
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Although a range of glomerular diseases profoundly affect glomerulus-associated cells, a comprehensive understanding of their molecular alterations is still lacking. Here, we performed in-depth analysis of glomerular data from mouse models of primary and secondary glomerulopathies and constructed a multi-disease cellular landscape of glomerular cells. We identified a putative subset of proliferative glomerular endothelial cells(gECs) that highly expresses genetic susceptibility genes associated with multiple glomerular diseases. Podocytes exhibited shared injury-associated cell types across different disease models. A podocyte subset highly expressing Endou, Cd200, Lgmn, Il18, Dmpk, and Spon2 was predominantly derived from ob/ob mice, whereas another podocyte subset with high expression of Selenbp1, Lpar1, S100a8, S100a9, and Sult1a1 was mainly observed in adriamycin-induced mice. Mesangial cells shared common injury-related alterations across diseases (high expression of Cxcl1, egr1, hspa1b, socs3 and dnajb1), while ob/ob mice exhibited a distinct mesangial cell subset (high expression of aldh1a2, thbs1 and fbln5). In contrast, the gECs displayed similar molecular changes across different diseases without giving rise to disease-specific subtypes. Intercellular ligand-receptor analysis underpins the recruitment of immune cells by injured mesangial cells and podocytes via specific engagement of pairs such as CXCL and MIF, respectively. Our study systematically elucidates the molecular alterations of glomerulus-associated cells across various diseases, providing a foundation and strategic insights for future targeted therapies tailored to specific glomerular disease contexts.
Keywords: cross-disease atlas, glomerular disease, Mesangial cell, podocyte, single-cell RNA sequencing
Received: 08 Dec 2025; Accepted: 06 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Chen, Huang, li, Li, Duan, Huang, Wang, Ma and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Qilin Chen
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