Recently, Professor Chen Zhu's team from the Rheumatology and Immunology Department of the First Affiliated Hospital of China University of Science and Technology has made important progress in the pathogenesis research of rheumatoid arthritis. the results of the study are as follows: "Age-associated B cells contribute to the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis by inducing activation of arthritis. "fibroblast-like synoviocytes via TNF-α-mediated ERK1/2 and JAK-STAT1 pathways" was published in the Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases (IF= 27.973). This study revealed the role and molecular mechanism of age-related B cells (ABCs) in promoting the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) by activating fibroblast-like synovial cells (FLS), and provided a basis for the future development of targeted B-cell therapy for RA.

FLS is the core effector cell in the pathogenesis of RA, and the interaction between FLS and immune cells is the key link in the pathogenesis of RA. ABCs is a special subgroup of B cells discovered in recent years, which is characterized by the secretion of myeloid molecule CD11c and transcription factor T-bet, and is thought to be involved in the pathogenesis of a variety of autoimmune diseases.

The study found that ABCs in peripheral blood and synovial fluid increased significantly in patients with RA, in direct proportion to disease activity. Transcriptomic analysis showed that genes related to chemotactic and adhesion molecules were significantly up-regulated in ABCs. The researchers co-cultured ABCs and FLS in vitro and found that the secretion of IL-6 and matrix metalloproteinases increased significantly in FLS, and the effect was cell-contact independent. Further transcriptomic analysis and in vitro molecular experiments showed that ABCs induced FLS activation through the secretion of TNF-α and its mediated ERK1/2 and JAK-STAT1 pathways.

Qin Yi, PhD student, and CAI Minglong, postdoctoral fellow, Faculty of Life Sciences and Medicine, University of Science and Technology of China, are co-first authors of the paper. Zhu Chen, Professor of Rheumatology and Immunology, and Jingang Huang, Associate Researcher, Medical Research Center, Sun Yat-sen University, are co-corresponding authors. This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the International Cooperation Project of Anhui Provincial Key Research and Development Program. The preliminary work has been published in the world-famous journals Nature Communications, Nature Reviews Rheumatology, Arthritis & Rheumatology, etc.

Paper link:https://ard.bmj.com/content/early/2022/06/27/ard-2022-222605.full

(Department of Life Science and Medicine, First Affiliated Hospital, Research Department)

Source: HKUST News Network