TLS are accumulations of lymphoid cells that share similar cellular compartments, organization, and function as secondary lymphoid organs. Importantly, the presence of these structures in inflamed salivary glands associated with active disease, increased autoantibody production, and malignancy risk. "To treat patients effectively, comprehensive understanding of the salivary gland microenvironment is needed ", said Saba Nayar, " but current profiling efforts often struggle to capture high-plex 'omics data while preserving the spatial architecture of the tissue.
" To address this, the team mapped both identified cell types and novel populations, clustering tissue architectural features to define eight so-called neighborhoods. Some of these were enriched with epithelial cells, but others were associated with different immune cell populations. One neighborhood was enriched with IgA plasma cells, and was associated with myeloid populations – in contrast to other IgG plasma cells niches.
This novel spatial mapping work – presented in a basic abstract session on new pathways in Sjögren's disease – has the potential to reveal novel cellular landscape and their interactions, aiding therapeutic and discoveries for the management of Sjögren's disease. A second abstract focused on SGEC, which are already known to play a pathogenic role in Sjögren's disease. Research is underway to develop and characterize differentiated organoids of SGEC derived from minor salivary gland biops.
