Preclinical study reveals a placental-fetal liver Spp1-TGFβ-Rbl2 axis driving immune suppression in mouse offspring, highlighting mechanisms of fetal immune impairment from maternal obesity.
Maternal obesity (MO) impairs immunological development in the offspring with poorly defined mechanisms. By integrating single-cell RNA sequencing datasets from placentas and fetal livers of diet-induced obese mice, data showed that MO markedly enhances inflammatory and immune activation within the placenta but induces immunosuppression in fetal liver. Inter-organ cell-cell communication analysis further revealed that placental Spp1 signaling sent by macrophage potentiates TGFβ/Smad signaling in fetal liver immune cells, which promotes Rbl2 upregulation and induces a G1 phase arrest in T cells and basophils. Finally, T cell function is inhibited by MO. Totally, this study identifies a potential placental-fetal liver Spp1-TGFβ-Rbl2 axis associated with fetal immunosuppression due to MO.
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Kou et al. (2026) studied this question.
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