Project description:Understanding the immune response to tuberculosis requires greater knowledge of humoral responses. To characterize antibody targets and the effect of disease parameters on target recognition, we developed a systems immunology approach that integrated detection of antibodies against the entire Mycobacterium tuberculosis proteome, bacterial metabolic and regulatory pathway information, and patient data. Probing ~4,000 M. tuberculosis proteins with sera from >500 suspected tuberculosis patients worldwide revealed that antibody responses recognized ~10% of the bacterial proteome. This result defines the immunoproteome of M. tuberculosis, which is rich in membrane-associated and extracellular proteins. Most serum reactivity during active tuberculosis focused onto ~0.5% of the proteome. Within this pool, which is selectively enriched for extracellular proteins (but not for membrane-associated proteins), relative target preference varied among patients. The shift in relative M. tuberculosis protein reactivity observed with active tuberculosis defines the evolution of the humoral immune response during M. tuberculosis infection and disease. Peripheral blood was collected from prospectively enrolled TB suspects among subjects seeking care for pulmonary symptoms at clinics associated with national TB control programs in 11 countries. M. tuberculosis proteome microarrays representing 4099 bacterial protein spots were probed with sera from 561 TB suspects. Based on the final diagnosis, they belonged to two classes: TB (n=254) and Non-TB Disease (n=307). In addition, healthy individuals negative to Latent TB Infection (LTBI neg, n=64) were also tested (negative control sera). Each serum was tested with a single array and no replicate experiments were performed. The reactivity of a serum to an M. tuberculosis protein (reactivity call) was defined based on the distribution of negative control sera intensity for that protein using Z-statistics. Based on the distribution of reactivity calls, 27 outlier samples reacting with more than 20 proteins were excluded from further analysis. The association of reactivity calls of each protein with TB/NTBD status of TB suspects was determined by estimating odds ratio and 95% confidence interval.

Project description:Biomarkers for early detection of chronic kidney disease are needed, as millions of patients suffer from chronic diseases predisposing them to kidney failure. Protein microarrays may hold utility in the discovery of auto-antibodies in other conditions not commonly considered auto-immune diseases. We hypothesized that proteins are released as a consequence of damage at a cellular level during end-organ damage from renal injury, not otherwise recognized as self-antigens, and an adaptive humoral immune response to these proteins might be detected in the blood, as a non-invasive tracker of this injury. The resultant antibodies (Ab) detected in the blood would serve as effective biomarkers for occult renal injury, enabling earlier clinical detection of chronic kidney disease than currently possible, due to the redundancy of the serum creatinine as a biomarker for early kidney injury. To screen for novel autoantibodies in chronic kidney disease, 24 protein microarrays were used to compare serum Ab from patients with chronic kidney disease against matched controls. From a panel of 38 antigens with increased Ab binding, 4 were validated in 71 individuals, with (n=50) and without (n=21) renal insufficiency. Significant elevations in the titer of novel auto-Ab were noted against Angiotensinogen (AGT) and PRKRIP1 in renal insufficiency. Current validation is underway to evaluate if these auto-Ab can provide means to follow the evolution of chronic kidney disease in patients with early stages of renal insufficiency, and if these rising titers of these auto-Ab correlate with the rate of progression of chronic kidney disease. Serum antibodies were profiled for 7 healthy individuals and 17 patients with chronic kidney disease, using the Invitrogen ProtoArray® Human Protein Microarray v3.0 platform (Invitrogen, Carlsbad, CA). This platform contains 5,056 non-redundant human proteins expressed in a baculovirus system, purified from insect cells and printed in duplicate onto a nitrocellulose-coated glass slide. Each protein is spotted twice on each array, to measure the quality of the signal intensity. Details for experiment processing and analysis follow the previous publication from our group (Li et al Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2009 Mar 17;106(11):4148-53). Prospector software was used to retrieve the expression based on immune response profiling of the .gal files.

Project description:Orbital fibrosis is a hallmark of tissue remodeling in thyroid-associated ophthalmopathy (TAO). Previous studies have shown that interleukin (IL)-11 plays a pivotal profibrotic role in various inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. However, the expression pattern of IL-11 in patients with TAO and whether IL-11 is mechanistically linked with pathological fibrosis remains unknown. In this study, we investigated IL-11 levels in the serum and orbital connective tissue of patients with TAO, and evaluated the correlation of these levels with the patient’s clinical activity score. We also evaluated the expression pattern of IL-11Rα in orbital connective tissue. Furthermore, we elucidated the regulatory factors, profibrotic function, and downstream signaling pathways for IL-11 in TAO using in vitro studies. Serum and orbital connective tissues IL-11 levels were increased in patients with TAO, as compared with healthy controls. In addition, both levels were positively correlated with disease activity. Single-cell RNA sequencing of orbital connective tissue indicated that IL-11Rα was dominantly expressed in orbital fibroblasts (OFs). RNA sequencing of paired unstimulated and transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1-stimulated samples demonstrated that upregulation of IL-11 expression defined the dominant transcriptional response. IL-11 signaling was also confirmed to be downstream of TGF-β1 and IL-1β. Therefore, we deduced that IL-11 protein is secreted in an autocrine loop in TAO. We also indicated that IL-11 mediated the profibrotic phenotype switch by detecting the expression of myofibroblast differentiation markers, including α-smooth muscle actin and collagen type I α1, which could be abrogated by an anti-IL-11 neutralizing antibody. Furthermore, we revealed that extracellular regulated protein kinase may be a crucial factor in the pro-fibrotic, translationally specific signaling activity of IL-11. These data demonstrate that IL-11 plays a crucial role in orbital fibroblast phenotype switching and may be a potential therapeutic target candidate for the treatment of TAO.

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