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How promiscuity promotes tolerance: the case of myasthenia gravis

Bruno Kyewski1, Richard Taubert

  • 1German Cancer Research Center, Developmental Immunology, Im Neuenheimer Feld 280, D-69120 Heidelberg, Germany. b.kyewski@dkfz.de

Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
|June 24, 2008
PubMed

Central T cell tolerance in the thymus plays a nonredundant role in preventing organ-specific autoimmunity. This role is largely attributable to promiscuous expression of tissue-restricted auto-antigens in medullary thymic epithelial cells (mTECs). The nascent T cell repertoire is exhaustively screened for potential autoreactivity against these ligands presented by mTECs. Failure of this screening process can result in organ-specific autoimmune diseases affecting single or multiple organs. Here we discuss how promiscuous expression of the acetylcholine receptor alpha-chain in the human thymus can potentially affect self-tolerance toward this well characterized auto-antigen and thus influence the disease course of myasthenia gravis.

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