Spatial transcriptomics meets diabetic kidney disease: Illuminating the path to precision medicine

Figure 1 The experimental workflow of spatial transcriptomics in diabetic kidney disease. Kidney tissue is first sectioned and stained with hematoxylin and eosin to retain histological context. Prepared slides undergo spatial barcoding and cDNA synthesis, followed by library construction and sequencing. The resulting data are used to reconstruct spatial gene expression patterns, identify cellular neighborhoods, and infer cell–cell interactions within intact renal tissue.

Figure 2 Applications of spatial transcriptomics in diabetic kidney disease. Spatial transcriptomics (ST) has been applied to diabetic kidney disease to investigate a range of spatially resolved pathological features. The representative examples include the analysis of cell-cell interactions within the renal microenvironment, the identification of region-specific gene expression signatures, and the characterization of immune infiltration in glomerular lesions-particularly involving M2 macrophages and mast cells. In addition, ST enables the detection of localized molecular alterations, such as lipid accumulation and mitochondrial damage in tubular epithelial cells, as well as spatial variation in signaling activity, including alterations in the phosphoinositol-3 kinase pathway. DKD: Diabetic kidney disease.