No abstract

Infiltration of T cells into the kidney is a typical feature of human and experimental lupus nephritis that contributes to renal tissue injury. The chemokine receptor CXCR3 is highly expressed on Th1 cells and is supposed to be crucial for their trafficking into inflamed tissues. In this study, we explored the functional role of CXCR3 using the MRL/MpJ-Faslpr (MRL/lpr) mouse model of systemic lupus erythematosus that closely resembles the human disease. CXCR3−/− mice were generated and backcrossed into the MRL/lpr background. Analysis of 20-wk-old CXCR3−/− MRL/lpr mice showed amelioration of nephritis with reduced glomerular tissue damage and decreased albuminuria and T cell recruitment. Most importantly, not only the numbers of renal IFN-γ-producing Th1 cells, but also of IL-17-producing Th17 cells were significantly reduced. Unlike in inflamed kidneys, there was no reduction in the numbers of IFN-γ- or IL-17-producing T cells in spleens, lymph nodes, or the small intestine of MRL/lpr CXCR3−/− mice. This observation suggests impaired trafficking of effector T cells to injured target organs, rather than the inability of CXCR3−/− mice to mount efficient Th1 and Th17 immune responses. These findings show a crucial role for CXCR3 in the development of experimental lupus nephritis by directing pathogenic effector T cells into the kidney. For the first time, we demonstrate a beneficial effect of CXCR3 deficiency through attenuation of both the Th1 and the newly defined Th17 immune response. Our data therefore identify the chemokine receptor CXCR3 as a promising therapeutic target in lupus nephritis.

No abstract

The transcription factor BCL11B is essential for development of the nervous and the immune system, and Bcl11b deficiency results in structural brain defects, reduced learning capacity, and impaired immune cell development in mice. However, the precise role of BCL11B in humans is largely unexplored, except for a single patient with a BCL11B missense mutation, affected by multisystem anomalies and profound immune deficiency. Using massively parallel sequencing we identified 13 patients bearing heterozygous germline alterations in BCL11B. Notably, all of them are affected by global developmental delay with speech impairment and intellectual disability; however, none displayed overt clinical signs of immune deficiency. Six frameshift mutations, two nonsense mutations, one missense mutation, and two chromosomal rearrangements resulting in diminished BCL11B expression, arose de novo. A further frameshift mutation was transmitted from a similarly affected mother. Interestingly, the most severely affected patient harbours a missense mutation within a zinc-finger domain of BCL11B, probably affecting the DNA-binding structural interface, similar to the recently published patient. Furthermore, the most C-terminally located premature termination codon mutation fails to rescue the progenitor cell proliferation defect in hippocampal slice cultures from Bcl11b-deficient mice. Concerning the role of BCL11B in the immune system, extensive immune phenotyping of our patients revealed alterations in the T cell compartment and lack of peripheral type 2 innate lymphoid cells (ILC2s), consistent with the findings described in Bcl11b-deficient mice. Unsupervised analysis of 102 T lymphocyte subpopulations showed that the patients clearly cluster apart from healthy children, further supporting the common aetiology of the disorder. Taken together, we show here that mutations leading either to BCL11B haploinsufficiency or to a truncated BCL11B protein clinically cause a non-syndromic neurodevelopmental delay. In addition, we suggest that missense mutations affecting specific sites within zinc-finger domains might result in distinct and more severe clinical outcomes.