Single-cell analysis of temporal immune cell dynamics in alopecia areata reveals a causal role for clonally expanded CD8+ T cells in disease

Alopecia areata (AA) is an immune-mediated hair loss disorder characterized by the infiltration of immune cells, including clonally expanded CD8⁺ T cells into lesional skin. To explore the link between CD8⁺ T cell clonality and disease pathogenicity, we conducted single-cell RNA and T cell receptor (TCR) sequencing in the C3H/HeJ mouse model of AA. We analyzed T cells derived from skin and skin-draining lymph nodes to capture both the end-organ and the site of antigen priming and found striking hyper-expansion of T cell clones associated with disease onset. Using the hyperexpanded CD8⁺ TCR sequences, we generated TCR retrogenic mice engineered to express a single clonotypic T cell population, applied CRISPR-Cas9 to engineer these TCR sequences within CD8⁺ T cells, and performed depletion experiments to demonstrate that expanded CD8⁺ T cell clones are sufficient to initiate disease, establishing a causal relationship between CD8⁺ T cell clonality and pathogenicity in disease.