Aims
Endometriosis is a growth of endometrial tissues outside the uterine cavity, causing chronic pain and infertility. The gold standard for diagnosing endometriosis is by having a invasive laparoscopy surgery.
We have generated dense single-cell and spatial reference maps of the human uterus
We dissect the signalling pathways that determine cell fate of the epithelial lineages in the luminal and glandular microenvironments
Methods
All patients presented to our minimally invasive gynaecologic surgery at Royal Brisbane women hospital. We processed the Eutopic (n= 24) and ectopic tissues (n= 10) by Snap freezing in liquid nitrogen and subsequently stored at −80 °C. The tissues were cut onto visium slides according to the 10x genomics Visium Spatial tissue preparation guide. Alignment and Qc was done using space Ranger, UMAPs and images were generated using loupe browser.
Results
The Eutopic tissues used were characterised into different mensural cycle by H&E staining and multiplexed together. The H&E stained slides of the ectopic lesions were reviewed to confirm the presence of endometriosis lesions. We have generated a spatial reference map of the human uterus to deconvolute bulk data from endometrial cancers and endometriotic lesions, illuminating the cell types dominating in each tissue.
Conclusions
This technique will help develop a platform for future development in the area of endometriosis to create treatment for common conditions including endometriosis and endometrial carcinoma.