Researchsingle cell rna seqcardiac neuronsheart failuretranscription factors
Cardiac Neurons Reveal N4-ALK Heart Failure Subset
8.2
Xiuqi Yang et al. (published March 20, 2026) integrate single-nucleus RNA-seq from 75 heart failure patients and 45 healthy donors to map 11,026 cardiac neurons, defining ten neuronal subsets and highlighting an N4-ALK subset enriched in failing hearts. They implicate RXRG and a PTN–PTPRZ1 signaling axis in N4-ALK neurons and develop an N4-ALK-derived machine-learning signature to identify heart failure patients.
Key Points
- 1Mapped 11,026 cardiac neurons into ten distinct neuronal subsets across 75 patients and 45 donors
- 2Identified N4-ALK subset enriched in failing hearts and associated with LVAD response
- 3Developed N4-ALK-derived machine-learning signature for population-level heart failure identification and biomarker discovery
Scoring Rationale
Strong integrative single-cell discovery with predictive signature; limited by observational design and need for experimental validation.
Sources
Public references used for this report.
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