Junseo Cha, M.S.
Doctoral Student
Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders
Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Cellular Atlas of Vocal Fold Injury and Repair
With innovations in gene-targeting therapy, cellular atlases have been widely used in other parts of the body to identify the pathogenesis of diseased organs and to search for potential target genes to cure such diseases. Accordingly, a cell atlas of vocal fold tissues has been constructed during different stages of the vocal fold wound healing process in FVB/NJ mice. After clustering, we identified a total of 23 major cell types, including epithelial, mesenchymal, endothelial, neural, and immune populations. Epithelial clusters were subdivided into secretory, basal, and suprabasal clusters, and immune cells were subdivided to identify myeloid and lymphoid cell populations. Differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were used to delineate enriched pathways for each of the subclusters to identify their roles in wound healing. Results show an acute inflammatory response mostly in immune cell populations and certain mesenchymal populations during the early stages of wound healing, followed by a high proliferation profile from epithelial populations as the recovery stage progresses. Our data show distinct trajectories of macrophage differentiation throughout the wound healing period, with complex cell-cell communication between epithelial, myeloid, lymphoid, and mesenchymal cell populations. These findings serve as foundational background for future research on vocal fold biology and successful wound healing.
This project was funded by NIDCD R01004336.