Extended Data Fig. 3: The melanoma–Treg-induced vitiligo mouse model recapitulates hallmarks of human vitiligo.
From: Anatomically distinct fibroblast subsets determine skin autoimmune patterns
a, UMAP projection of skin immune cells from patients with vitiligo and healthy donors. We identified 5 major clusters in immune cells, including two adaptive immune cell clusters (CD4+ T cell and CD8+ T cell) and three innate immune cell clusters (Langerhans cell, macrophage, dendritic cell 1/2). Other immune cells of very low abundance in human skin, such as mast cells and γδ T cells, could also be observed in our single-cell RNA-seq data, but owing to their limited number these cell types were not analysed individually. b–e, Heat map (b), dot plot (c), violin plot (d) and feature plot (e) analysis of signature genes in each immune cell subtype. f, Quantification and comparison of five immune cell types between progressive-state patients with vitiligo and healthy donors by scRNA-seq analysis. g, Representative FACS profiles analysing immune cell types in mice vitiligo skin, including epidermal TCRγδhigh and TCRγδlow γδ T cell present in mouse. h, i, Quantification and comparison of immune cell types between vitiligo (at Day 33) and control mice. Data in f-g showed the predominantly enriched immune cell type is CD8+ T cell in both patients with vitiligo and the melanoma/Treg-induced vitiligo mouse model, whereas the other immune cell types did not show significant difference. j, Representative whole-mount immunofluorescent staining images of CD4+ T cells in WT skin, and Tregs in Foxp3Cre;Ai14 skin, indicating at Day 33 of vitiligo analysis, the CD4+ T cell population have recovered from systematical CD4+ T cell depletion. k, Heat map analysis of cytotoxicity-related genes expressed in skin CD8+ T cells of patients with vitiligo and vitiligo-induced mice, indicating that in molecular level, this melanoma/Treg-induced vitiligo mouse model elicits endogenous auto-reactive CD8+ cytotoxic T cells similar to human vitiligo. Ctl: control, Vit: vitiligo. Scale bars, 200 µm (k). For exact p values, see Source Data. For statistics, p summary and sample sizes, see Methods.
