Spatial multi-omics analysis of the microenvironment in traumatic spinal cord injury: a narrative review

Traumatic spinal cord injury (tSCI) leads to a local microenvironmental imbalance in the spinal cord, including accumulation of cytokines and chemokines, reduced angiogenesis, dysregulation of cellular energy metabolism, and dysfunction of immune cells at the site of injury, which severely impedes neurological recovery from spinal cord injury (SCI). Spatial multi-omics technology combines data from immunohistochemistry and multiparametric analysis to reveal the changes in the microenvironment at different times of secondary injury after SCI. The review systematically examines the progress of spatial multi-omics techniques in studying the microenvironment after SCI, covering changes in the immune microenvironment and potential future therapeutic strategies.

• 1
  Single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) has advanced understanding of the pathophysiology of spinal cord injury, offering insights into new cell types/subtypes, neuroimmunology, biological states, and their activation.
• 2
  Spatial transcriptomics using in situ hybridization (ISH) and in situ sequencing (ISS) allows for the spatial information of cells to be explored, preserving the spatial information of the sample by bypassing tissue dissociation.
• 3
  Spatial multi-omics technologies are now widely used to study the transcriptome, proteome, and metabolome of the immune microenvironment of spinal cord injury, enabling new insights into the interactions between intracellular and inter-cellular molecular mechanisms.