The structure of a human rheumatoid factor bound to IgG Fc

This is the first crystal structure analysis of a complex between an autoantibody and its autoantigen, and it reveals a mode of interaction never before seen in an antibody-antigen complex. Not only are there relatively few antibody contact residues, contributing perhaps to its very low affinity, but these residues are to be found on only one side of the potential combining site surface. Indeed, so many CDR residues are not involved in Fc binding, including those in the central region of the combining site, that it is easy to envisage that this RF may have another, entirely different, specificity. The antibody may therefore have originated in response to another, as yet unidentified, antigen, and the reactivity with IgG Fc may be an unfortunate cross-reactivity. Certainly some of the CDR residues which do interact with IgG Fc are germline encoded, but significantly one of only two residues in the light chain, Pro56, which makes many contacts with Fc, is a somatic mutation. Since this mutation would appear to make a significant contribution to the binding affinity, it is therefore evidence for an antigen driven response to the IgG Fc in the generation of this autoantibody. The Fc epitope recognised by RF-AN is strikingly similar to the binding sites for the bacterial binding proteins A and G, but the significance of this is not clear. What is clear however is that the epitope does not include any part of the Fc carbohydrate residues, although the structure of the complex does reveal that there is an alteration in the carbohydrate conformation when the galactose residues are absent. Loss of the interaction between the terminal galactose residue on the alpha (1-6) linked branch and the C gamma 2 domain appears to allow the carbohydrate chains to become mobile, at the same time exposing a predominantly hydrophobic patch on the C gamma 2 surface. Accessibility to either the agalactosyl carbohydrate chains or the newly exposed residues may account for the enhanced reactivity for G0-IgG that has been reported for certain RFs, and such an epitope need not be very different to that recognised by RF-AN. In order to understand more completely the effect of the presence or absence of the terminal galactose residue, the fully galactosylated glycoform of Fc must be studied for comparison; this work is underway. It is also important now to study a RF which is known to sense this difference in oligosaccharide composition, and also to study RFs of higher affinity, of the IgG class, and from the synovium. RF-AN was the first RF to be immortalised as a cell line, and in many ways it is a typical RF (in terms of specificity, relationship to germline sequence and affinity), but we must now establish whether the novel structural features revealed in this analysis are indeed typical of other RFs. Only when comparisons can be made between RFs of different origin and with contrasting functional properties will we begin to understand what constitutes a pathogenic RF, and the mechanism by which such auto-reactive antibodies are generated.