Our research
The complexity of human autoreactivity: understanding the clonal diversity of B cells and antibodies.
B cells and antibodies are an essential part of the adaptive immune system and play important roles in protecting us from infectious threats. Yet, in autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (IIM), and rheumatoid arthritis (RA), the host’s immune system - for unknown reasons - recognizes self-biomolecules as foreign. This can cause, if left untreated, devastating disease.
In different diseases, distinct biomolecules are targeted by different classes of self-reactive autoantibodies. Moreover, within in each diagnosis patients display heterogeneous autoantibody profiles, which can define clinical subsets. However, much is still unknown about why someone develops autoimmunity and why patients display different clinical phenotypes and respond differently to treatment. We think that understanding the adaptive immune system is the key to solving these questions. Notably, not all autoantibodies are contributing to disease and some, in par