RESUMO
Hematopoietic humanized mice (hu-mice) have been developed to study the human immune system in an experimental in vivo model, and experiments to improve its performance are ongoing. Previous studies have suggested that the impaired maturation of human B cells observed in hu-mice might be in part due to inefficient interaction of the human B-cell-activating factor (hBAFF) receptor with mouse B-cell-activating factor (mBAFF), as this cytokine is an important homeostatic and differentiation factor for B lymphocytes both in mice and humans. To investigate this hypothesis, we created a genetically engineered mouse strain in which a complementary DNA (cDNA) encoding full-length hBAFF replaces the mBAFF-encoding gene. Expression of hBAFF in the endogenous mouse locus did not lead to higher numbers of mature and effector human B cells in hu-mice. Instead, B cells from hBAFF knock-in (hBAFFKI) hu-mice were in proportion more immature than those of hu-mice expressing mBAFF. Memory B cells, plasmablasts, and plasma cells were also significantly reduced, a phenotype that associated with diminished levels of immunoglobulin G and T-cell-independent antibody responses. Although the reasons for these findings are still unclear, our data suggest that the inefficient B-cell maturation in hu-mice is not due to suboptimal bioactivity of mBAFF on human B cells.
RESUMO
Disease susceptibility for type 1 diabetes is strongly associated with the inheritance of specific HLA alleles. However, conventional allele frequency analysis can miss HLA associations because many alleles are rare. In addition, disparate alleles that have similar peptide-binding sites, or shared epitopes, can be missed. To identify the HLA shared epitopes associated with diabetes, we analyzed high-resolution genotyping for class I and class II loci. The HLA epitopes most strongly associated with susceptibility for disease were DQB1 A(57), DQA1 V(76), DRB1 H(13), and DRB1 K(71), whereas DPB1 YD(9,57), HLA-B C(67), and HLA-C YY(9,116) were more weakly associated. The HLA epitopes strongly associated with resistance were DQB1 D(57), DQA1 Y(80), DRB1 R(13), and DRB1 A(71). A dominant resistance phenotype was observed for individuals bearing a protective HLA epitope, even in the presence of a susceptibility epitope. In addition, an earlier age of disease onset correlated with significantly greater numbers of susceptibility epitopes and fewer resistance epitopes (P < 0.0001). The prevalence of both DQ and DR susceptibility epitopes was higher in patients than in control subjects and was not exclusively a result of linkage disequilibrium, suggesting that multiple HLA epitopes may work together to increase the risk of developing diabetes.