Back

Alloreactivity and autoreactivity converge to support B cell epitope targeting in transplant rejection

Killian, J. T.; King, R. G.; Kizziah, J. L.; Fucile, C. F.; Diaz-Avalos, R.; Qiu, S.; Silva-Sanchez, A.; Mousseau, B. J.; Macon, K. J.; Callahan, A. R.; Yang, G.; Hossain, M. E.; Akther, J.; Houp, J. A.; Rosenblum, F. D.; Porrett, P. M.; Ong, S. C.; Kumar, V.; Mobley, J.; Saphire, E. O.; Kearney, J. F.; Randall, T. D.; Rosenberg, A. F.; Green, T. J.; Lund, F. E.

2023-04-02 immunology
10.1101/2023.03.31.534734 bioRxiv
Show abstract

Donor-specific antibody (DSA) responses against human leukocyte antigen (HLA) proteins mismatched between kidney transplant donors and recipients cause allograft loss. The rules governing the immunogenicity of non-self donor HLA are poorly understood. Using single-cell, molecular, structural, and proteomic techniques, we profiled the HLA-specific B cell response in the kidney and blood of a transplant recipient with antibody-mediated rejection (AMR). We observed an immunodominant B cell antibody response focused on topographically exposed, solvent-accessible mismatched HLA residues along the peptide-binding groove - a subregion comprising only 20% of the HLA molecule. We further demonstrated that, even within a diverse cohort of transplant recipients, the B cell alloresponse consistently converges on this same immunodominant subregion on the crown of the HLA molecule. Based on these findings, we propose that B cell immunodominance in transplant rejection relies on antigenic topography, and we suggest that this link could be exploited for organ matching and therapeutics.

Matching journals

The top 5 journals account for 50% of the predicted probability mass.

50% of probability mass above

"Similar papers" are the closest papers from that journal in the model's embedding space. They show what the match is built on, but the ranking comes mostly from a classifier over the whole training set, not from these examples alone.