Recently, the team led by Professor Lu Qianjin, the director of the Department of Dermatology and Venereology and a well-known dermatologist in theSecond Xiangya Hospital of CSU, and the team of BGI jointly published the latest research results under the “Article” section of Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases(Ann Rheum Dis) (IF: 12.35), an international authoritative journal of rheumatology. Their research is the first to reveal the characteristics of the T cell receptor (TCR) lineage in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and healthy individuals; it shows that the disease-associated TCR clone can be used as a potential diagnostic marker.

The paper is entitled “T cell receptor β repertoires as novel diagnostic markers for systemic lupus erythematosus and rheumatoid arthritis”. Dr. Liu Xiao and Dr. Zhang Wei from BGI and Professor Zhao Ming from the Department of Dermatology and Venereology of Xiangya Second Hospital are the co-first authors, and Professor Lu Qianjin is the sole corresponding author.Ann Rheum Dis(Q1) ranks first among the journals in the field of international rheumatology. The paper is another innovative result after the publication of basic and clinical research results in the internationally renowned academic journals such as Lancet, JAMA, Nature Communications, Journal of Clinical Investigation, and Blood.

Both SLE and RA are typical autoimmune diseases, and their pathogenesis has not yet been fully elucidated. T cells play an important role in the pathogenesis of SLE and RA, and autoreactive T cells can be observed in peripheral blood and organs of patients with SLE and RA. For the first time, the paper conducted the most comprehensive quantitative analysis of the β-chain of TCR in patients with SLE, RA and healthy individuals. It was found that there were significant differences in the V region, J region and V-J regions of the TCR β chain in the three groups. At the same time, the research identified 198 SLE-related TCR clones, and 53 RA-related TCR clones which had significant specificity and sensitivity for distinguishing between SLE and RA patients, and healthy individuals.

Source: Second Xiangya Hospital