Applying Spatial Statistics to Spatial Transcriptomics Reveals Local Association Between M2-like Macrophages and Fibrosis in Diabetic Kidney Disease (opens in new tab)

Renal fibrosis is the common final pathway of chronic kidney disease (CKD), driven in part by myofibroblast-mediated extracellular matrix deposition. M2 macrophages have been implicated as a source of myofibroblasts through macrophage-to-myofibroblast transition (MMT), yet whether M2 macrophages are pro- or anti-fibrotic remains controversial, and the spatial context in which MAC-M2-fibrosis coupling occurs is unknown. Here, we applied geographically weighted regression (GWR), a spatial stati...