Discovery of Phosphorylated Peripherin as a Major Humoral Autoantigen in Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus.

ABSTRACT: A major goal in understanding autoimmune diseases is to define the antigens that elicit a self-destructive immune response, but this is a difficult endeavor. In an effort to discover autoantigens associated with type 1 diabetes (T1D), we used epitope surrogate technology that screens combinatorial libraries of synthetic molecules for compounds that could recognize disease-linked autoantibodies and enrich them from serum. Autoantibodies from one patient revealed a highly phosphorylated form of peripherin, a neuroendocrine filament protein, as a candidate T1D antigen. Peripherin antibodies were detected in 72% of donor patient sera. Further analysis revealed that the T1D-associated antibodies only recognized a dimeric conformation of peripherin. These data explain why peripherin was dismisse

SUBMITTER: Doran TM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4890052 | biostudies-literature | 2016 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature