NeuMap Reveals the Hidden Structure and Lifelong Patterns of Human Neutrophils
Neutrophils are the body's most abundant immune cells and are the first responders to infection or tissue injury. Yet despite their crucial role, our understanding of how they truly function, how they adapt to different tissue environments, and how they influence not only host defense but also inflammatory, cardiovascular, or cancer-related diseases has remained limited. Their versatile actions can save lives during infection, but they can also amplify inflammation, as seen in conditions like COVID-19.
To decipher this complexity, an international consortium led by researchers from the Centro Nacional de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares (CNIC), Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M), Yale University, and Westlake University (China) developed NeuMap — the first comprehensive atlas detailing how neutrophils are organized across tissues, life stages, and disease states. With NeuMap, scientists now have a clear framework to navigate the immense heterogeneity of these cells, marking a new era in understanding and guiding the immune system.
The Nature study analyzed over a million cells using cutting-edge sequencing technologies.
What stands out most, says Dr. Iván Ballesteros, professor at UC3M’s Department of Neuroscience and Biomedical Sciences and a CNIC researcher, is that individual neutrophils have lifespans of only a few hours, yet this cell population maintains a stable architecture throughout life. It’s a pattern that emerges from apparent chaos. Grasping this logic opens fresh paths to steer immunity toward healing.
The work also highlights a long-standing issue: the absence of a reliable benchmark has hindered accurate interpretation of these cells’ true roles. Yale-CNIC scientist Andrés Hidalgo notes that prior studies tended to focus on single diseases, such as cancer or infection. “Here, we aggregated a vast array of conditions—from pregnancy and fetal development to infections, cancer, myocardial infarction, and aging.”
By integrating all these data, explains co–first author Daniela Cerezo-Wallis (Yale University), researchers could observe common patterns in neutrophils despite their apparent diversity.
Cross-species analyses, noted co–first author Andrea Rubio-Ponce (CNIC), revealed that many neutrophil programs are surprisingly conserved between mice and humans. This greatly facilitates translation to clinical studies and speeds the development of biomarkers and new therapies, adds Laiguan Ng of Westlake University.
Beyond bringing order to a historically fragmented field, NeuMap offers a practical tool: it enables researchers to identify which neutrophil types appear in a disease and infer their possible functions. The authors also emphasize that the atlas will be freely available to the global scientific community.
Funding for the project came from multiple sources, including the Cancer Research Institute; Spain’s Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities / Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI); Fundación BBVA; Worldwide Cancer Research; NIH; Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft; Fundación Leducq; IZKF/IMF Münster; Bachynski Family Foundation; Canada Foundation for Innovation; National Medical Research Council and Skin Research Institute of Singapore; National Natural Science Foundation of China; European Union NextGenerationEU/PRTR; and the European Regional Development Fund.
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