Single-Cell Analysis Reveals That CD47 mRNA Expression Correlates with Immune Cell Activation, Antiviral ISGs, and Cytotoxicity

BACKGROUND/AIMS: Immune cells are reported to upregulate CD47 during infection, however, the role of CD47 in innate and adaptive immune cells remains unclear. METHODS: To bridge this knowledge gap, we analysed our single cell (sc)-RNA dataset along with other publicly available sc-RNA datasets from healthy controls, people with HIV-1 (PWH) and COVID-19 patients. We characterized each immune cell based on low, intermediate, and high expression of CD47 . RESULTS: Our analyses revealed that CD47high pDCs and monocytes exhibited relatively higher expression of IFN-α regulatory genes, antiviral interferon-stimulated genes (ISGs) and MHC-I associated genes compared to CD47inter. and CD47low cells. Furthermore, CD47high NK and CD8+ T cells showed higher expression of antiviral ISGs, as well as genes encoding for cytotoxic markers like granzyme B, perforin, granulysin, interferon gamma and NKG7. Additionally, CD47high CD8+ T cells expressed higher levels of PD-1 and LAG-3 genes. Lastly, we found that CD47high B cells had enriched expression of genes involved in cell activation and humoral responses. CONCLUSION: Overall, our analyses revealed that innate and adaptive immune cells expressing elevated activation and functional gene signatures also express higher CD47 levels.