Fine needle aspiration of human lymph nodes reveals cell populations and soluble interactors pivotal to immunological priming

Lymph node (LN) fine needle aspiration (LN FNA) represents a powerful technique for minimally invasive sampling of human LNs in vivo and has been used effectively to directly study aspects of the human germinal center response. However, systematic deep phenotyping of the cellular populations and cel...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:European journal of immunology 2024-05, Vol.54 (5), p.e2350872-n/a
Main Authors: Provine, Nicholas M., Al‐Diwani, Adam, Agarwal, Devika, Dooley, Kyla, Heslington, Amelia, Murchison, Andrew G., Garner, Lucy C., Sheerin, Fintan, Klenerman, Paul, Irani, Sarosh R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biopsy
Biopsy, Fine-Needle - methods
Contamination
Female
Fine needle aspiration
Germinal Center - immunology
Germinal centers
Humans
Immune priming
Immunity, Innate
Innate immunity
Lymph nodes
Lymph Nodes - immunology
Lymphatic system
Male
Neuroimmunology
Phenotyping
Proteins
Proteomics
Proteomics - methods
Single-Cell Analysis - methods
Single‐cell transcriptomics
Transcriptomics
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Summary:Lymph node (LN) fine needle aspiration (LN FNA) represents a powerful technique for minimally invasive sampling of human LNs in vivo and has been used effectively to directly study aspects of the human germinal center response. However, systematic deep phenotyping of the cellular populations and cell‐free proteins recovered by LN FNA has not been performed. Thus, we studied human cervical LN FNAs as a proof‐of‐concept and used single‐cell RNA‐sequencing and proteomic analysis to benchmark this compartment, define the purity of LN FNA material, and facilitate future studies in this immunologically pivotal environment. Our data provide evidence that LN FNAs contain bone‐fide LN‐resident innate immune populations, with minimal contamination of blood material. Examination of these populations reveals unique biology not predictable from equivalent blood‐derived populations. LN FNA supernatants represent a specific source of lymph‐ and lymph node‐derived proteins, and can, aided by transcriptomics, identify likely receptor–ligand interactions. This represents the first description of the types and abundance of immune cell populations and cell‐free proteins that can be efficiently studied by LN FNA. These findings are of broad utility for understanding LN physiology in health and disease, including infectious or autoimmune perturbations, and in the case of cervical nodes, neuroscience. Lymph node fine needle aspiration is a powerful technique for sampling human lymphoid tissue. However, it has not been used to study innate immune populations or lymph node‐associated soluble factors. Using single‐cell RNA‐sequencing and proteomics, we demonstrate the ability of this technique to elucidate the unique biology of these immune parameters.
ISSN:0014-2980
1521-4141
DOI:10.1002/eji.202350872