Single-cell RNA-Seq Analysis to investigate the potential of epithelial stem cells from human small bronchi in the treatment of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis.
Basal cells (BCs) are essential airway stem cells to maintain and repair the integrity of airway epithelium. We performed scRNA-seq to evaluate the cultured airway basal cell condition and heterogeneity between healthy control and IPF groups.  Similar distributions of BCs subpopulations were detected between healthy control and IPF groups. Through GO enrichment analysis, we found that a vast majority of cells defined as cluster A were highly expressing genes associated with normal cell functions such as cell proliferation and division. Despite a small portion of cluster B cells (approximately 4% of total) existing in IPF samples, this was attributed to a background ratio when compared with healthy controls. We next investigated the potential regulatory impact of transplanted BCs on host endogenous cells(Fibroblasts & Distal_ BCs) by analysis of scRNA-seq data. Our study reveals that epithelial stem cells from human small bronchi offer a potential for therapy of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis. Overall design: BCs and  fibroblasts  were generated by deep sequencing, using BD Rhapsody Analysis pipeline (Version: 1.8).