The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the ongoing challenges in managing respiratory outbreaks. The respiratory tract is composed of heterogeneous epithelial structures and numerous specialized cell types 1. Conventional cell lines poorly recapitulate the complexity of the respiratory tract epithelium. This emphasizes the need for physiologically relevant models enabling the recreation of the epithelial microenvironment in vitro to facilitate understanding of biological function and the development of tailored therapeutics.
Our previous bulk RNAseq findings in hNECs show a significant upregulation of AhR expression following viral infection (Fonseca BF et al., unpublished data). Nevertheless, this initial analysis is insufficient for addressing how AhR is modulated across diverse cell populations such as those found in the respiratory epithelia. Therefore, our objective is to perform scRNAseq analysis to: 1) identify which specific cell type express AhR and related pathway components; 2) investigate the transcriptional changes induced by AhR antagonism; 3) examine the impact of AhR antagonism on other inflammatory pathways (e.g. NF-kB, IFN among others); 4) investigate the interplay between diverse cell types in this context. Understanding AhR antagonism under uninfected conditions serves as the basis for further exploration of this pathway during viral infections.
