Stereotypic T cell receptor clonotypes in the thymus and peripheral blood of Myasthenia gravis patients

• DOI: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e26663
• Publication Date: 2024-02-19T17:33:51Z
• Authors: Yonghee Lee; Seung Woo Kim; Eunjae Lee; Ha Young Shin; MinGi Kim; Chang Young Lee; Byung Jo Park; Ha Eun Kim; Young Ho Yang; Jinny Choi; Soyeon Ju; Jungheum Park; Namphil Kim; Jaewon Choi; Jin Gu Lee; Sunghoon Kwon; Junho Chung
• Keywords: Social sciences (General); H1-99; Q1-390; 0303 health sciences; 03 medical and health sciences; Science (General); T cell receptor repertoire; Acetylcholine receptor; Myasthenia gravis; Thymus; Research Article

Myasthenia Gravis (MG) patients with anti-acetylcholine receptor (AChR) antibodies frequently show hyperplastic thymi ectopic germinal centers, where autoreactive B cells proliferate the aid of T cells. In this study, thymus and peripheral blood (PB) samples were collected from ten AChR antibody-positive MG patients. cell (TCR) repertoires analyzed using next-generation sequencing (NGS), compared that an age sex matched control group generated a public database. Certain V genes VJ gene recombination pairs significantly upregulated in TCR chains αβ-T PB to group. Furthermore, found had weighted distribution longer CDR3 lengths when patients, beta (TRB) group's showed increased clonality encoded by one gene. When TRB sequences sub-divided into groups based on their lengths, certain decreased PB. Finally, we demonstrated stereotypic patient-specific clonotypes co-exist both at much higher frequency than confined These results strongly suggest existence biased cell-mediated immune response as observed other autoimmune diseases.