Abstract 4135951: Single Nuclei RNA Sequencing Reveals Distinct Cellular Composition of Pericoronary Adipose Tissue

Introduction: Adipose tissue is a metabolically active organ with local paracrine interactions on adjacent tissues. Pericoronary adipose tissue (PcAT) is an emerging cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk factor and likely has paracrine effects on coronary vasculature that may promote coronary artery disease (CAD) development. PcAT may be functionally and clinically distinct from epicardial adipose tissue (EAT) given its proximity to the coronary artery adventitia. The cellular composition of PcAT and EAT and whether they have unique inflammatory cell signatures and functional expression at a single cell level has not been explored. Hypothesis: PcAT will have diverse cellular composition with heightened inflammatory cell content compared to EAT. Methods: Visual dissection of paired EAT not adjacent to an epicardial coronary artery and PcAT in direct apposition to an epicardial artery (left anterior descending artery) was performed from a single human heart immediately after explant (prior to heart transplantation). Nuclei were isolated using the Chromium Nuclei Isolation Kit (10x Genomics) with RNAse inhibitor. Cells were counted with a Cellometer K2 and Chromium Next GEM Single Cell libraries were prepared, followed by reverse transcription, PCR and NovaSeq 6000 platform sequencing. Raw sequence reads from single nuclei RNA-seq (snRNA-seq) were processed and after QC filtering, cells were clustered using Seurat. Clusters were annotated using singleR. Results: In PcAT and EAT, >7000 cells were successfully extracted with 73755 and 48750 mean snRNA-seq reads per cell, respectively. snRNA-seq cellular composition analysis delineated a heightened inflammatory milieu and distinct cellular composition of human PcAT vs. EAT. A UMAP (Uniform Manifold Approximation and Projection) plot displays higher inflammatory cell infiltrate with a neutrophil predominance and lesser adipocyte composition in PcAT compared with EAT ( Figure 1) . Conclusions: We have generated snRNA-seq data from human PcAT and shown distinct cellular composition compared to EAT. Given the proximity of PcAT to coronary vasculature, these results are supportive of paracrine inflammatory effects and highlight adipose tissue biology in cardiovascular disease. Understanding this biology may identify novel therapeutic targets for CVD.