Speaker : David HAFLER, Department of Neurology and lmmunology, Yale School of Medicine and Broad lnstitute of MIT and Harvard University.
"Genetics, Viruses, and the Cause of Multiple Sclerosis"
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a complex genetically mediated inflammatory disease of the CNS where B cell depletion halts the autoimmune disease. Though the EBV infection of B cells is implicated as the environmental trigger of MS, how infection triggers the disease is not known. Here, we developed a pipeline to quantify EBV DNA from whole-genome sequencing data in a large cohort of over half million subjects identifying 39 susceptibility risk loci. Surprisingly, a significant overlap with genetic variants associated with MS risk was observed p<10-12. EBV-infected B cells constituted a critical hub that modulates T cell responses while simultaneously activating MS gene linked susceptibility pathways within the B cell compartment. Thus, we defined a genetic and cellular framework linking B cells to the initiation of MS and support a causal raie of EBV activity on MS risk.
Hosted by Jean-Léon THOMAS
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