MINI REVIEW article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Inflammation
This article is part of the Research TopicFriend or foe? - The role of macrophages and neutrophils in liver pathologiesView all 5 articles
Neutrophil and Macrophage Zonation in Liver Disease: From Spatiotemporal Dynamics to Advanced Computational Analysis
Provisionally accepted
- 1Hannover Medical School, Hanover, Germany
- 2Deutsches Zentrum fur Lungenforschung e V, Giessen, Germany
- 3Fraunhofer-Institut fur Toxikologie und Experimentelle Medizin ITEM, Hanover, Germany
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Liver disease progression is profoundly shaped by the spatial and temporal dynamics of innate immune cells, particularly neutrophils and macrophages. Recent advances in single-cell and spatial omics, intravital imaging, and multiplexed histology have revealed how these cells exhibit distinct zonation patterns along the portal-central axis and undergo dynamic reprogramming in response to injury, infection, and metabolic stress. Neutrophils preferentially accumulate in necrotic or pericentral zones, whereas macrophage subsets adopt diverse zonal identities and display remarkable plasticity, collectively orchestrating inflammation and tissue repair. In this review, we consolidate current knowledge on neutrophil and macrophage zonation in liver disease, emphasizing their roles in shaping pathophysiology and clinical outcomes. We also briefly outline how emerging technologies are refining our understanding of immune microanatomy and may pave the way for precision hepatology.
Keywords: AI-enhanced analysis, Liver zonation, macrophage, multi-omics, Neutrophil, single cell transcriptomics, single nuclei transcriptomics, Spatial transcriptomics
Received: 15 Dec 2025; Accepted: 09 Feb 2026.
Copyright: © 2026 Kim and Lachmann. 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: Hyeree Kim
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