Commensal Microbes May Initiate and Drive Immune Responses in Lupus | Taconic Biosciences

At the end of March, researchers at Yale University published a paper entitled "Commensal orthologs of the human autoantigen Ro60 as triggers of autoimmunity in lupus"
in the journal Science Translational Medicine in which the authors
demonstrated that Ro60 orthologs exist in commensal bacteria commonly
found in or on the human body.


Greiling et al. demonstrated in human and mouse studies that
these bacterial orthologs of Ro may generate autoimmune responses that
drive lupus. The authors revealed that a high level of homology exists
between the major T and B cell epitopes within human Ro60 (hRo60) and
commensal Ro60 orthologs. Antibodies from anti-Ro60 positive lupus
patients, but not negative control patients preferentially
coimmunoprecipitated Ro60 ribonucleoproteins (RNPs) from a Ro60
ortholog-containing commensal organism. Further demonstrating the
cross-reactivity of orthologous Ro60, hRo60-reactive T cell clones, and
freshly isolated anti-Ro60-positive memory T cells responded to epitopes
derived from commensal Ro60 in vitro.

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