Diane Mathis

Harvard Medical School, USA

Title: Initiation of arthritis by commensal microbes
Authors: Joyce Wu, Christophe Benoist and Diane Mathis
Department of Pathology, Harvard Medical School Boston, MA 02115

Department of Pathology, Harvard Medical School Boston, MA 02115

Abstract:

K/BxN T cell receptor (TCR) transgenic mice are a model of human rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Disease is initiated by a T, then B, cell response to the ubiquitous enzyme glucose-6-phosphate isomerase (GPI). The resulting high titers of anti-GPI antibodies drive a potent effector phase, which depends on a number of innate immune system players, including mast cells, neutrophils, Fc receptors, the complement cascade and inflammatory cytokines. A powerful feature of this model is the ability to cleanly separate the (adaptive) initiation and (innate) effector phases, the latter being recapitulated by simply transferring serum from arthritic K/BxN mice into normal recipients. This presentation will focus on how commensal microbes, through the induction of Th17 cells in the gut, promote the initiation of arthritis in K/BxN mice.

Biography:

Dr. Diane Mathis obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Rochester, and performed postdoctoral studies at the Laboratoire de Génétique Moléculaire des Eucaryotes in Strasbourg, France and at Stanford University Medical Center. She returned to France at the end of 1983, establishing a laboratory at the Institut de Genetique et de Biologie Moleculaire et Cellulaire (LGME) [later the Institut de Genetique et de Biologie Moleculare et Cellulaire (IGBMC)] in Strasbourg, in conjunction with Dr. Christophe Benoist. The lab moved to the Joslin Diabetes Center, Boston, MA at the end of 1999. Through 2008, Dr. Mathis was a Professor of Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School, and an Associate Research Director and Head of the Section on Immunology and Immunogenetics at Joslin, where she held the William T. Young Chair in Diabetes Research. In early 2009, the lab moved to the Pathology Department at Harvard Medical School. Dr Mathis is currently Professor of Pathology at HMS. She is also Director of the JDRF Center on Immunological Tolerance in Type-1 Diabetes at HMS, a Principal Faculty Member at the Harvard Stem Cell Institute and an Associate Faculty Member of The Broad Institute. Dr. Mathis was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences in 2003 and to the German Academy in 2007. The lab works in the fields of T cell differentiation and autoimmunity.