Researchers at VCU Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center announced on Mar. 23 a major international study that advances the understanding of how fibroblasts regulate structural immunity in the mouth.
The findings, featured as the cover story in the first issue of Cell Press Blue, are significant because they provide new insights into the immunoregulatory roles of fibroblasts—cells previously known mainly for providing structural support. The research could help guide future therapies for conditions such as fibrosis, cancer, and autoimmune diseases.
Kevin Matthew Byrd, D.D.S., Ph.D., a member of Massey's Cancer Biology research program and assistant professor at VCU School of Dentistry, along with Jinze Liu, Ph.D., professor in VCU's Department of Biostatistics and research member at Massey, led this project. Their work shows that by targeting shared communication networks between stromal and immune cells across barrier organs during health and chronic disease, new therapeutic strategies may be developed.
The study uses an AI-enabled atlas that integrates single-cell sequencing with dual-platform spatial proteotranscriptomics. This approach allows researchers to explore links between chronic inflammatory diseases, autoimmune conditions, and several cancers to identify potential opportunities for targeted treatments. The publication also introduces AstroSuite—a toolkit designed to provide scalable and reproducible spatial biology analysis across different tissues and disease contexts. AstroSuite combines several bioinformatics tools including TACIT.
"We started off with this single-cell sequencing approach, but, in parallel, also employed mspatial-multiomic sequencing approaches," said Byrd. "AstroSuite became an essential technology where we were stacking technologies on top of one another, allowing us to map in distinct clusters in ways that we couldn't see through one technology alone."
VCU is coordinating this international collaboration alongside Queen Mary University of London with contributions from institutions such as University of North Carolina; Duke University; Wellcome Sanger Institute; Mildred-Scheel Early Career Centre for Cancer Research; University Hospital Würzburg; National Institutes of Dental and Craniofacial Research; University of Pennsylvania; University of Cambridge; and University of Groningen.
Byrd highlighted the collaborative nature: "These researchers and universities wanted to be part of the study...and they wanted to utilize the atlas...We want this research to accelerate discovery." He added: "We're trying to take the best of multiple worlds...and hopefully advance science more quickly. We want to see progress, and we know that's not going to happen in one lab alone."
