| Budget Amount *help |
¥4,420,000 (Direct Cost: ¥3,400,000、Indirect Cost: ¥1,020,000)
Fiscal Year 2014: ¥910,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000、Indirect Cost: ¥210,000)
Fiscal Year 2013: ¥910,000 (Direct Cost: ¥700,000、Indirect Cost: ¥210,000)
Fiscal Year 2012: ¥2,600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥2,000,000、Indirect Cost: ¥600,000)
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| Outline of Final Research Achievements |
T cells mediating autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA), are difficult to characterize because they are likely to be deleted or inactivated in the thymus if the self-antigens they recognize are ubiquitously expressed. One way to obtain and analyze these autoimmune T cells is to alter T cell receptor (TCR) signaling in developing T cells to change their sensitivity to thymic negative selection, thereby allowing their thymic production. From mice thus engineered to generate T cells mediating autoimmune arthritis, we have isolated arthritogenic TCRs and characterized the self-antigens they recognized. One of them was the ubiquitously expressed 60S ribosomal protein L23a (RPL23A), with which T cells and autoantibodies from RA patients reacted. This strategy may improve our understanding of the underlying drivers of autoimmunity.
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