4. Conclusion
SCS has revealed some important molecular mechanisms of airway
physiology and pathogenesis of inflammatory diseases, cancer, and viral
sensitization (summarized in Table 1 and Figure 1). It has also
suggested new research perspectives for subsequent studies. Regarding
inflammatory diseases of the upper and lower airways, the immune
microenvironment, different immune cell subpopulations, and inflammatory
heterogeneity mechanisms have been explored, and regulation of the
immune response by the airway epithelial cell barrier has been described
by application of SCS technology. With regards to airway viral
infections and tumorigenesis, a large amount of data is now available to
construct a cellular atlas that more comprehensively describes the
cellular atlas of normal human lung tissue. RNA-Seq analysis studies are
now advancing not only within single cells but also in a variety of
cells and organs by using molecular information with high spatial and
temporal precision. Of course, SCS has some limitations; for example the
accurate transcription rates of RNA-Seq may not be consistent across all
eukaryotic cells. Additionally, cell isolation procedures, including
upstream and downstream processing, vary widely across studies, which
limits reproducibility and affects the accuracy of reported datasets,
often leading to over- or under-reporting of specific cell
subpopulations. Future single-cell multi-omics technologies will be
geared toward a broader range of airway diseases, and more accurately
reveal the specific mechanisms of action of multiple cell types, and
even subtypes in airway diseases. In addition, we believe that future
efforts may also focus on applying SCS technology to a wide range of
airway diseases, such as the correlation between AR and asthma
development, NPC metastasis, disease recurrence, drug resistance, and
phylogeny, in order to better understand the origins, treatments, and
proper care of patients with airway diseases.
Table 1 Important findings regarding airway diseases achieved
using SCS