Fig. 5: Clonal expansion of effector CD8⁺ T cells with enhanced inflammation and cytotoxicity in VEXAS.

a A UMAP plot of 128,236 T cells. b A neighborhood (Nhood) graph of T cells, which was generated similarly as in Fig. 2a. c Beeswarm and box plots of T cells for VEXAS (n = 9) and healthy donors (n = 5), which were generated similarly as in Fig. 2b. d Distributions of T cell clone states in each subtype between VEXAS patients and healthy donors. e UMAP embedding of T cells from VEXAS patients (right) and healthy donors (left) colored by clonal expansion sizes. f Gini index and Shannon diversity index of TCR clonality in CD4⁺ T cells, CD8⁺ T cells, and total T cells from VEXAS (n = 9) and healthy donors (n = 5). Data are presented as mean with SD. P values were calculated with the two-sided unpaired Mann–Whitney U test. g Dynamic changes of gene module scores of the IFN-γ response, T-cell mediated cytotoxicity, and exhaustion pathways in CD8⁺ T cells from VEXAS patients and healthy donors along differentiation. x axis, pseudotime ordering from naïve CD8⁺ T cells to effector memory CD8⁺ T cells estimated by slingshot; y axis, gene module scores for each pathway. Data are presented as mean with 1.96*SE. gdT gamma delta T cells, MAIT mucosa-associated invariant T cell, proT proliferative T, Treg regulatory T cells, TCR T cell receptor. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.