Project description:Autoimmune myasthenia gravis (MG) is characterized by thymic abnormalities such as hyperplasia and thymoma. Thymus plays an important role in self-tolerance and is involved in initiation and progression of the disease. A large proportion of MG patient show the presence of ectopic germinal centers (GC) in thymus that are absent in normal individuals. However, the exact mechanism how this change in thymus morphology is triggered and if this is related to pathophysiology of the disease remains unknown. In this study we have compared the mRNA profile of thymus samples obtained during a clinical trial (Thymectomy Trial in Non-Thymomatous Myasthenia Gravis Patients Receiving Prednisone Therapy. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT00294658). We have compared the miRNA profile of thymus samples that have distinct germinal centers with those that lack them using Affymetrix miRNA array 4.0 to identify the differentially expressed genes with in the two groups.
Project description:Autoimmune myasthenia gravis (MG) is characterized by thymic abnormalities such as hyperplasia and thymoma. Thymus plays an important role in self-tolerance and is involved in initiation and progression of the disease. A large proportion of MG patient show the presence of ectopic germinal centers (GC) in thymus that are absent in normal individuals. However, the exact mechanism how this change in thymus morphology is triggered and if this is related to pathophysiology of the disease remains unknown. In this study we have compared the mRNA profile of thymus samples obtained during a clinical trial (Thymectomy Trial in Non-Thymomatous Myasthenia Gravis Patients Receiving Prednisone Therapy. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT00294658). We have compared the mRNA profile of thymus samples that have distinct germinal centers with those that lack them using Affymetrix human transcriptome array 2.0 to identify the differentially expressed genes with in the two groups.
Project description:Myasthenia gravis (MG) is an autoimmune disease with an incompletely understood mechanism and limited treatment options. MG is a systemic autoimmune disease, complex abnormal humoral and cellular immune responses play a crucial role in the pathogenesis of MG. The pathological changes involve not just individual immune tissues, but also complex interactions among multiple organs and systems. However, the majority of previous studies focused on abnormalities in peripheral blood and the thymus. With the development of high-throughput technology, several studies have unbiasedly revealed abnormal numbers and function of immune cells by single-cell RNA sequencing and, cytometry-of-time-flight/mass cytometry (CyTOF), indicated pivotal role of aberrant changes in innate immune cells, including monocytes and natural killer cell (NK), in the pathogenesis of MG. Nevertheless, these innate immune cells reside not only in blood, but also widely within the central and peripheral immune organ including bone marrow, thymus, spleen, and lymph nodes. But it is particularly difficult to collect these samples from patients and healthy control, hindering the comprehensive understanding of pathological mechanisms of MG. In the present study, single-cell sequencing technology was used to construct a cross-tissue single-cell atlas including bone marrow, thymus, spleen, lymph and whole blood in experimental autoimmune myasthenia gravis (EAMG) model