T cell recognition of post-translationally modified autoantigens in rheumatoid arthritis

Post-translational modification of joint proteins leads to the generation of autoantigenic peptides that drive the inflammatory response in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). This project is an investigation of the T cell response to MHC-II molecules presenting RA associated peptides. MHC-II tetramers will be used to analyse the T cell repertoire of native and modified peptide-specific CD4+ T cells in DR4-transgenic mice in an RA disease model. The isolation of TCRs sequences from these cells will used to generate T cell lines to validate their peptide-MHC-ii restriction. Such T cell lines will prove invaluable across the RA field.