Fig. 4: Targeting nuclear ACE2 with NACE2i leads to inhibition of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, pro-inflammatory macrophages with simultaneous induction of NK cells, and ACE2^me in treated lung tissues.

a Stacked bar plot showing cell type deconvolution results for NanoString DSP data. ROIs are split by tissue type (bronchiole (left) and alveoli (right)) and ordered by control and NACE2i-treated samples in each tissue type. Each bar indicates the proportion of each cell type in a particular ROI, n = 12 ROIs from n = 2 hamsters per group. b Notched box plot showing the proportion of macrophages, NK cells, and pDCs for control and NACE2i-treated bronchioles using NanoString DSP data (n = 12 ROIs from n = 2 hamsters per group). The Wilcoxon test was performed. The notches show the 95% confidence interval estimates of the median. The interquartile range (IQR) covers the middle 50% of the distribution. The vertical lines show the range, extended to a maximum of 1.5x IQR beyond the box. c Overlaying of registered IF images (in blue, appearing as a faint layer on top of the red background) onto NanoString images (in red). The overlayed images show that the two layers are well aligned after image registration (n = 1 hamster/group). d Integrated comparison of IF data and NanoString data for 12 ROIs in sectionH05_H023 (n = 1 hamster/group). Line plot shows the expression of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and ACE2^me from IF data. Stacked bar plot shows cell type proportions from NanoString DSP data. x-axis shows ROIs, the left y-axis shows cell proportion, and the right y-axis shows expression values of the two markers (on z-scale).