Paper from Sollid's group published in Nature Immunology
An article from Ludvig Sollid's "Functional Immunogenetics" group at the Institute of Immunology has recently been published in the prestigious journal "Nature Immunology".
The paper - entitled "Differences in the risk of celiac disease associated with HLA-DQ2.5 or HLA-DQ2.2 are related to sustained gluten antigen presentation" is co-first-authored by Lars-Egil Fallang and Elin Bergseng, while Ludvig Sollid is the senior and last author. The work also involves collaborators from the National University of Singapore.
Sollid's group is striving to understand what happens when the immune system directly or indirectly causes harm to the body. Celiac disease, rheumatoid arthritis and type 1 (insulin-dependent) diabetes are examples of autoimmune disorders of a chronic inflammatory nature.
Celiac disease, which is an intestinal inflammation caused by an inappropriate immune response to gluten, is a good model system to study, as the precipitating factor, gluten is known.
In their recent article, they investigated the reason why of two highly similar HLA molecules, DQ2.5 shows celiac disease predisposition and DQ2.2 does not. Their work show that this differential association is controlled by a single amino acid difference in the peptide binding groove of these molecules, which strongly influence the time the two HLA-DQ2 variants can keep peptide fragments of antigens for presentation to immune cells. These differences mean that more stable binding to the gluten peptides occurs in people with the DQ2.5 molecule, making such individuals susceptible for celiac disease development.
The authors suggest this increased peptide dwell time might also explain other autoimmune diseases associated with particular HLA alleles.
The article:
Fallang LE, Bergseng E, Hotta K, Berg-Larsen A, Kim CY, Sollid LM (2009)
Differences in the risk of celiac disease associated with HLA-DQ2.5 or HLA-DQ2.2 are related to sustained gluten antigen presentation
Nat Immunol, 10 (10), 1096-101
Link to Nature Immunology - Link to PubMed
(journal impact factor Nature Immunology: 25.1)
About Centre for Immune Regulation
Centre for Immune Regulation (Senter for Immunregulering) is a research centre located at the University of Oslo and the Oslo University Hospital. The scientific goal of the centre is to identify mechanisms of immune dysregulation that contribute to autoimmune disease and allergy.
The Centre is lead by Ludvig Sollid (Director) and Inger Sandlie (Assistant Director), whereas Elin Lunde is the administrative leader. The five research groups are headed by Ludvig Sollid, Inger Sandlie, Oddmund Bakke, Bjarne Bogen, and Finn-Eirik Johansen. In total, just about 100 persons are involved in research at CIR.
Links
Ludvig Sollid's group - "Functional Immunogenetics" University of Oslo
Research web pages under www.rr-research.no: