Cure8 regulatory brief
Researchers aim to create computational tools to identify cell–cell signaling that controls the mix of epithelial cell types in mucosal tissues. For IBD, such tools could help reveal signals that change intestinal epithelial composition in disease and point to new therapeutic targets or biomarkers.
Researchers working on single-cell or spatial transcriptomics, computational biologists, translational scientists focused on mucosal biology (including IBD), and clinicians interested in future biomarker or target discovery.
NIH Reporter project summary describes a funded Broad Institute research project to develop computational methods that use single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) and spatial transcriptomics to infer intercellular signaling networks that control cellular composition of mucosal epithelia.
The proposal plans four new algorithms: two for paracrine compositional inference from scRNA-seq/ST and two to reduce technical artifacts in scRNA-seq, with benchmarking and validation in simulated and real data and mechanistic follow-up across organs.
The summary highlights applications across mucosal tissues (gut, lung, nose, urogenital tract) and explicitly names inflammatory bowel disease among target chronic diseases where altered epithelial cell-type composition may matter.
Methods will be open-source and intended as computational tools for mapping how specialized epithelial cells regulate barrier tissues. This entry is a project record (funded research) describing planned methods and validation; it does not report completed results or clinical findings.
The brief sticks to the abstract provided on NIH Reporter and does not attempt to interpret unpublished data.
This is a funded project record describing proposed methods and planned validation; it does not present peer-reviewed results. The work is computational and methodological, with intended downstream experimental validation across organs.
Review the original publication for the complete reporting, methods, and context.
Funding disclosed by the source: National Institute of General Medical Sciences - R35GM166090 - $464,032
This Cure8 brief is based on source text from the linked article. Cure8 is informational only and is not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment.
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