Integrated multi-omics, spatial profiling and organoid modeling drive transformative advances in chronic liver disease and hepatocellular carcinoma immunomicroenvironment research
Chronic liver disease (CLD) represents a major global public health challenge, necessitating a systematic understanding of its complex immunopathological mechanisms. This review comprehensively summarizes the groundbreaking applications of cutting-edge technologies-including single-cell sequencing, spatial transcriptomics, and organoid models-in chronic liver disease immunology research: Single-cell sequencing resolves immune cell heterogeneity at unprecedented resolution, identifies rare cell subsets, and reveals dynamic changes and regulatory networks through multi-omics integration; Spatial transcriptomics complements this by mapping immune-stromal interactions within structural contexts such as the portal tract, fibrotic septa, and tumor niches, uncovering spatially organized immune evasion mechanisms and microenvironmental remodeling; Organoid technology constructs humanized liver-immune models that recapitulate disease-specific features-such as fibrosis, steatohepatitis, and hepatocellular carcinoma-enabling mechanistic validation, drug screening, and individualized therapeutic exploration. The synergistic integration of multi-omics profiling, spatial mapping, and organoid modeling is driving a paradigm shift in chronic liver disease immunology-transitioning from static cellular descriptions to spatiotemporal mechanism decoding, and from population-level insights to individualized pathophysiology and treatment prediction. These advanced approaches establish a technological foundation for building precision immunotherapeutic strategies tailored to spatiotemporal regulation of the liver immune microenvironment.
Authors
- Senyan Wang
- Q. Liu
- Huawei Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2623-8706)
- Heng Zhang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0103-2173)
- Teng Li
- Chenyu Wang
- Wenjuan Wei
- Cheng Ye
Institutions
- Beijing Chao-Yang Hospital, Capital Medical University (CN)
- First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University (CN)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Frontiers in Immunology
- Published
- 2026-01-26
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2026.1743439
- Primary Topic
- Single-cell and spatial transcriptomics
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00