Journal: Nature Communications

Article Title: Deep phenotyping of skin tissue remodeling in patients with systemic sclerosis treated with CD19-CAR T cells

doi: 10.1038/s41467-026-72817-7

Figure Lengend Snippet: A Representative Masson-Trichrome staining images (CAR T patient 5, NDG patient 1 and SOC patient 4). Papillae quantifications (papillae/mm and papillary height) per section as well as collagen alignment coefficient are shown as bar graphs. The data are presented as median with interquartile range (IQR). p - values < 0.0125 were considered significant after Bonferroni correction. Baseline ( n = 18), CAR T: 1-month follow-up ( n = 10), CAR T: 6-month follow-up ( n = 9), CAR T: 12-month follow-up ( n = 10), natural disease course group: follow up ( n = 1) and standard-of-care treatments: follow up ( n = 7). B Representative images of 3D reconstruction of the skin surface of different body areas as captured with dynamic optical coherence tomography before and 2 months after CAR T cell therapy (patient 11). C mRSS change from baseline to the respective follow-up in the different treatment groups. Median mRSS improvement after CAR T cell therapy is shown at 1 month ( n = 11), 6 months ( n = 11) and 12 months ( n = 11). Median follow-up time in the NDG group ( n = 1) was 619 days after baseline and in the SOC group ( n = 8) 240 days after baseline. The data are presented as median with IQR. D Dot plot showing the enriched pathways detected by gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) of RNASeq data from skin biopsies collected at 1 month ( n = 5) or 12 months ( n = 3) after CAR T cell therapy, compared to baseline ( n = 6). Only pathways with an adjusted p -value < 0.05 are plotted. The size of the dots indicates the absolute value of normalized enrichment score. The colors represent the direction of regulation (red, upregulated; blue, downregulated in post-treatment samples). The color intensity denotes the adjusted p - value using the Benjamini-Hochberg procedure. Ctrl control; FU Follow-up; BL baseline; mo month; mRSS modified Rodnan Skin score; NDG natural disease course group; SOC standard of care; NES normalized enrichment score. 1 A-C Mann-Whitney nonparametric t-test was used.

Article Snippet: 3D-reconstruction was kindly provided by Dr. Engel (Siemens Healthineers).

Techniques: Staining, Tomography, RNA sequencing, Control, Modification, MANN-WHITNEY

Journal: Nature Communications

Article Title: Deep phenotyping of skin tissue remodeling in patients with systemic sclerosis treated with CD19-CAR T cells

doi: 10.1038/s41467-026-72817-7

Figure Lengend Snippet: A Representative fusion images of the FAPI PET scan and the corresponding CT scan before and 3 months after CD19-CAR T cell therapy (patient 4). 3D-reconstruction was kindly provided by Dr. Engel (Siemens Healthineers). Quantification of FAPI uptake is visualized as Spaghetti plot (before CAR T: n = 11, 3-6 mo-FU n = 11, 12 mo-FU: n = 7, 24 mo-FU n = 5). B Immunofluorescence for fibroblast activation protein (FAP) and the fibroblast marker prolyl-4-hydroxylase β (P4Hβ) and DAPI (CAR T patient 2, NDG patient 1, SOC patient 4). Quantification of FAP+ fibroblasts as percent of total fibroblasts shown as bar graph with median andIQR. Before CAR T ( n = 10), 1 mo-FU ( n = 10), 6 mo-FU ( n = 9), 12 mo-FU ( n = 9), before start of standard-of-care therapy ( n = 4), FU SOC ( n = 5). A , B : Mann-Whitney test was used, p - values < 0.025 were considered significant after Bonferroni-correction. Representative images and voronoi tesselations are shown. C Kernel density maps showing the spatial distribution of fibroblast density and CAR T cell response score in the skin (patient 9 at 1-mo FU). Color scales indicate relative densityfrom low (green) to high (red). UMAP plot displays CAR T cell response scores, based on the same UMAP shown in Supplementary Fig. . Yellow color represents low and red high CAR T cell response score. D UMAP plot showing fibroblast subpopulations detected by cISH,. Dot plot characterizes eight FB subpopulations based on er known marker genes. Dot size: proportion of expressing cells,dot color: te average expression levels. BL n = 7, 1-month FU n = 8, 6-month FU n = 4, 12-month FU n = 4. FAP + COL8A1+FBcorrespond to myofibroblasts. E Forest plot showing differential composition of non-epithelial component between baseline ( n = 7) and 12-mo FU ( n = 4) by a compositional regression model with donor-specific random intercepts using sccomp. Points represent the posterior mean estimates with error bars indicating 95% of credible intervals (2.5%–97.5%). Red bars indicate significant difference in cell proportion (FDR < 0.05)Dashed line: default threshold for the minimum effect size of ±0.1. FU Follow-up; BL baseline; mo month; NDG natural disease course group; Rec Reconstruction; SOC standard of care; NES normalized enrichment score. FB Fibroblast; FDR False discovery rate.

Article Snippet: 3D-reconstruction was kindly provided by Dr. Engel (Siemens Healthineers).

Techniques: Computed Tomography, Immunofluorescence, Activation Assay, Marker, MANN-WHITNEY, Expressing