Shubham Singh1*, Sakshi Singh2, Sayli Saw1, Sanjesh Rathi1, Bhawna Sharma3
1School of Pharmacy, Rai University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat-382260 India
2United Institute of Technology, Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, India
3KM University, School of Pharmacy, Mathura, Uttar Pradesh, India
* Address for Correspondence:
Dr. Shubham Singh, Assistant Professor,
School of Pharmacy, Rai University, Ahmedabad, Gujarat, India. E-mail: singhrbgj@gmail.com
Abstract
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) bioactives display wide pharmacological effects, yet bulk transcriptomic studies mask their cell-specific actions. This study applied single-cell RNA sequencing to delineate immune, neural and hepatic responses to chemically characterized TCM constituents. Murine splenic, hippocampal and hepatic tissues were dissociated into single-cell suspensions, processed on a 10× Genomics platform, sequenced at high depth and analyzed with Seurat for clustering, marker annotation, differential expression and pathway enrichment; ligand–receptor interactions were inferred by CellChat, with RT-qPCR and immunofluorescence validation. From over 42,000 high-quality cells, we resolved 15 immune, 12 neural and 10 hepatic subtypes. TCM exposure induced NF-κB modulators in macrophages, neurotrophic gene expression in astrocytes and xenobiotic-metabolism programs in hepatocytes, while pathway analysis highlighted coordinated immune–hepatic detoxification and neuroprotective signaling. Ligand–receptor mapping revealed strengthened IL-10–STAT3 and hepatocyte–Kupffer cross-talk. These findings demonstrate that single-cell transcriptomics exposes previously hidden, cell-type-specific pharmacodynamics of TCM bioactives, laying a mechanistic foundation for precision-oriented herbal pharmacology and rational drug development.
Keywords Single-cell RNA-seq; traditional Chinese medicine; immune modulation; neuroprotection; hepatic metabolism; pharmacotranscriptomics
