Università della Svizzera italiana

Neutralization and clearance of GM-CSF by autoantibodies in pulmonary alveolar proteinosis

Piccoli, Luca ; Campo, Ilaria ; Fregni, Chiara Silacci ; Fernandez Rodriguez, Blanca Maria ; Minola, Andrea ; Sallusto, Federica ; Luisetti, Maurizio ; Corti, Davide ; Lanzavecchia, Antonio

In: Nature communications, 2015, vol. 6, p. 7375

Pulmonary alveolar proteinosis (PAP) is a severe autoimmune disease caused by autoantibodies that neutralize GM-CSF resulting in impaired function of alveolar macrophages. In this study, we characterize 21 GM-CSF autoantibodies from PAP patients and find that somatic mutations critically determine their specificity for the self-antigen. Individual antibodies only partially neutralize GM-CSF...

Università della Svizzera italiana

Activin-A co-opts IRF4 and AhR signaling to induce human regulatory T cells that restrain asthmatic responses

Tousa, Sofia ; Semitekolou, Maria ; Morianos, Ioannis ; Banos, Aggelos ; Trochoutsou, Aikaterini I. ; Brodie, Tess M. ; Poulos, Nikolaos ; Samitas, Konstantinos ; Kapasa, Maria ; Konstantopoulos, Dimitris ; Paraskevopoulos, Giannis ; Gaga, Mina ; Hawrylowicz, Catherine M. ; Sallusto, Federica ; Xanthou, Georgina

In: Proceedings of the national academy of sciences of the United States of America, 2017, vol. 114, no. 14, p. E2891-E2900

Type 1 regulatory T (Tr1) cells play a pivotal role in restraining human T-cell responses toward environmental allergens and protecting against allergic diseases. Still, the precise molecular cues that underlie their transcriptional and functional specification remain elusive. Here, we show that the cytokine activin-A instructs the generation of CD4+ T cells that express the...