Editorial: Unraveling immune metabolism: single-cell & spatial transcriptomics illuminate disease dynamics

The interplay between cellular metabolism and immune function-immunometabolism-has emerged as a cornerstone of modern pathology (1). Immune cells are not static entities; they continuously adapt their metabolic programs to survive and function within hostile microenvironments, whether in the hypoxic core of a tumor, the inflamed synovium of an arthritic joint, or the fibrotic tissue of a failing kidney (1)(2)(3)(4)(5). Historically, our understanding of these processes was limited by bulk analyses that averaged metabolic signals across heterogeneous cell populations (6). However, the advent of single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) and spatial transcriptomics has precipitated a paradigm shift (6,7). We can now dissect the metabolic heterogeneity of immune cells at high resolution, mapping how specific metabolic pathways drive disease progression, resistance to therapy, and tissue remodeling (6). This Research Topic, Unraveling Immune Metabolism: Single-Cell & Spatial Transcriptomics Illuminate Disease Dynamics, was curated to bridge the gap between static metabolic profiling and dynamic disease pathology. The collection of ten articles published here spans a diverse spectrum of conditions-from solid tumors and renal disease to autoimmune disorders and cardiovascular failure. Collectively, they demonstrate how metabolic rewiring is not merely a consequence of disease, but a fundamental driver of the immune landscape.Nowhere is metabolic competition more fierce than in the tumor microenvironment (TME), where cancer cells and immune cells vie for limited nutrients. Several contributions to this topic highlight how spatial and single-cell technologies are decoding this competition. In the context of colorectal cancer, Wang et al. utilized single-cell and spatial transcriptomics to construct a high-resolution map of tumor heterogeneity.