Spatial transcriptomics meets diabetic kidney disease: Illuminating the path to precision medicine

Table 2 Top studies utilizing spatial transcriptomics in diabetic kidney disease

Number	Research topic	Application of ST and key issues resolved	Findings	Ref.
1	Discovery of disease-specific cell neighborhoods and signaling pathways	Used Slide-seqV2 technology to build cell-neighborhood maps and uncovered cell localization patterns and signaling networks	Revealed the cell interactions and signaling pathways in diabetic nephropathy	Marshall et al[15], Chen et al[16]
2	Epithelial-mesenchymal transition and interactions of renal tubular cells in DKD	Combined single-cell RNA sequencing with spatial transcriptomics to define the epithelial-mesenchymal transition of renal tubular epithelial cells and their interactions	Gained an in-depth understanding of the dynamic changes and mechanisms of renal tubular epithelial cells	Wang et al[17]
3	Immune cell infiltration patterns in DKD	Utilized spatial transcriptomic analysis to observe increases in specific immune cells in glomeruli	Clarified the role of immune cell infiltration in disease progression	Zhang et al[18]
4	Fibrosis-related protein biomarkers in DKD	Conducted spatial proteomic analysis to reveal late-stage fibrosis-related protein biomarkers	Provided potential diagnostic and therapeutic biomarkers	Hu et al[19]
5	Molecular mechanisms of renal tubular injury in DKD	Integrated spatial transcriptomic and proteomic analyses to find IL-32 upregulation and its mechanisms	Uncovered the key role of IL-32 in renal tubular injury	Chung et al[20]
6	Pathway alterations in DKD	Combined ST with multi-omics approaches to identify signaling pathways involved in DKD	Uncovered spatial alterations in inflammatory and apoptotic signaling pathways	Delrue and Speeckaert[21]
7	Involvement of AEBP1 in DKD	Spatial transcriptomic analysis of kidney biopsies from DKD patients	AEBP1 is notably upregulated and associated with fibrosis and inflammation	Tao et al[22]

DKD: Diabetic kidney disease; IL: Interleukin; ST: Spatial transcriptomics.