{
  "abstract": "Introduction: Vitiligo is an immune-mediated depigmentation disorder in which interferon-γ signalling and autoreactive CD8+ T cells are central, but the cross-cohort cellular ecosystem and donor-level disease signature remain incompletely resolved.\n\nMethods: We conducted a retrospective analysis of three public skin single-cell RNA-sequencing datasets comprising 35 donors and 93,287 post-quality-control cells. We combined donor-aware cell-composition and pseudobulk analyses with a deep attention multiple-instance learning model, and reserved a separate balanced patient -control cohort for independent evaluation.\n\nResults: Eleven major cell populations were identified. The donor-level classifier achieved 0.914 accuracy and an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.990 in donor-stratified five-fold cross-validation. After Benjamini -Hochberg correction across 11 cell types, vitiligo lesions showed macrophage expansion and depletion of fibroblasts, endothelial cells, and mast cells (all q = 0.029). Integrated ranking prioritised an interferon-γ/CXCL9 -CXCL10 programme, while CD8+ T cells displayed Trm-associated and cytotoxic-effector transcriptional states. An eight-feature signature trained only in the primary discovery cohort achieved an area under the curve of 0.944 (95% CI, 0.778 -1.000) and accuracy of 0.750 (95% CI, 0.468 -0.911) in a small independent cohort of six healthy controls and six patients with vitiligo; exact label permutation supported discrimination ( p = 0.003). A directional omnibus test across ten prespecified validation measures supported panel-level concordance ( p = 0.023), although no individual measure remained significant after multiple-testing correction.\n\nDiscussion: These findings provide preliminary external support for a multivariable signal connecting an expanded macrophage compartment, interferon-associated chemokine signalling, and Trm-like CD8+ T-cell states.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Department of Dermatology and Venereology, People’s Hospital of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region",
    "Xinjiang Clinical Research Center for Dermatology and Venereology",
    "Xinjiang Key Laboratory of Dermatology Research",
    "Xinjiang Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences",
    "Graduate School of Xinjiang Medical University"
  ],
  "article_type": null,
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 9,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        1,
        2
      ],
      "name": "Fang Xiang"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        1,
        2
      ],
      "name": "Yuan Ding"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        1,
        2
      ],
      "name": "Jingzhan Zhang"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        1,
        2
      ],
      "name": "Shirong Yu"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        1,
        2
      ],
      "name": "Xiangyue Zhang"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        1,
        2
      ],
      "name": "Hongjuan Wang"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        1,
        2
      ],
      "name": "Yun Qiu"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        3
      ],
      "name": "Hengchuang Yin"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        1,
        2,
        4
      ],
      "name": "Xiaojing Kang"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/28zsh06tn71q4.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.3389/fimmu.2026.1962144",
  "fulltext_url": null,
  "id": "28zsh06tn71q4",
  "issns": [
    "1664-3224"
  ],
  "landing_url": "https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2026.1962144/full",
  "language": null,
  "licence": "CC-BY-4.0",
  "licence_label": "CC BY 4.0",
  "licence_source": "article",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [],
  "openalex": null,
  "pdf_url": null,
  "pmcid": null,
  "pmid": null,
  "published": "2026-11-03",
  "publisher": "Frontiers Media SA",
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/28zsh06tn71q4.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-11-03T12:21:20Z",
      "native_id": "10.3389/fimmu.2026.1962144",
      "source": "crossref",
      "url": "https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2026.1962144/full"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "biology",
      "origin": "issn:1664-3224",
      "subfield": "immunology"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Deep learning-based integrative single-cell transcriptomic analysis of vitiligo",
  "title_text": "Deep learning-based integrative single-cell transcriptomic analysis of vitiligo",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-05T00:21:02Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/28zsh06tn71q4",
  "venue": "Frontiers in Immunology",
  "versions": []
}