Rheumatoid arthritis is characterized by synovial joint infiltration of activated CD4(+) T cells and MHC class II(+) APC, and is linked to specific HLA-DR alleles. Candidate autoantigens in synovial fluid and cartilage include type II collagen (CII) and cartilage gp39 (HCgp39). Using preparations of native Ag and T cells derived from Ag-immunized DR4-transgenic mice, we determined that human ex...

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Linda S. Zhang 1 , Min Xu 1 , Qing Yang 1 , Robert O. Ryan 2 , Philip Howles 1 , Patrick Tso 1 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 1. Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, University of Cincinnati College of 24 Medicine, Cincinnati, OH 45215 25 2. Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute, Oakland, CA 94609 26 27 28 29 Running Head: ApoA-V Deficiency Enhances Chylomicron...

The expression of HLA-DR1 (DRB1*0101) is associated with an enhanced risk for developing rheumatoid arthritis (RA). To study its function, we have solved the three-dimensional structure of HLA-DR1 complexed with a candidate RA autoantigen, the human type II collagen peptide CII (259-273). Based on these structural data, the CII peptide is anchored by Phe263 at the P1 position and Glu266 at P4. ...

Regulatory T cells (Tregs) are critical homeostatic components in preventing the development of autoimmunity, and are a major focus for their therapeutic potential for autoimmune diseases. To enhance the efficacy of Tregs in adoptive therapy, we developed a strategy for generating engineered Tregs that have the capacity to target autoimmune T cells in an Ag-specific manner. Using a retroviral e...

OBJECTIVE To investigate whether type II collagen (CII) is recognised by oligoclonally expanded synovial T cells of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). METHODS Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) from 15 RA patients were stimulated with CII in vitro. T cell clones expanded by such stimulation were compared with the clonally expanded synovial T cells by using T cell receptor (TCR) B...

The ubiquitous small heat shock proteins (sHSPs) are well documented to act in vitro as molecular chaperones to prevent the irreversible aggregation of heat-sensitive proteins. However, the in vivo activities of sHSPs remain unclear. To investigate the two most abundant classes of plant cytosolic sHSPs (class I [CI] and class II [CII]), RNA interference (RNAi) and overexpression lines were crea...

Aims: To investigate properties of [CII]158 $\mu$m emission RCW36 in a dense filamentary cloud. Methods: [CII] observations covering an area ~30 arcmin$\times$30 arcmin were carried out with Fabry-P\'{e}rot spectrometer aboard 100-cm balloon-borne far-infrared (IR) telescope angular resolution 90 arcsec. By using AKARI and Herschel images, the spatial distribution intensity was compared those f...

The immunodominant T cell determinant of type II collagen (CII) recognized by DBA/1 mice (I-Aq) is CII 260-267. The aims of this study were to determine the role of the amino acid residues within CII 245-270 in T cell signal transduction. To that end, we utilized I-Aq-restricted, CII-specific T cell hybridomas and examined tyrosine phosphorylation of TCR-zeta following stimulation with either w...

We report the case of a patient who experienced extreme recurrent gestational hyperlipidemia. She was diagnosed with partial lipoprotein lipase (LPL) deficiency but without an associated LPL gene mutation in the presence of the apolipoprotein E3/2 genotype. This is the first reported case of extreme gestational hyperlipidemia with a partial LPL deficiency in the absence of an LPL gene mutation ...