Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Closing the seronegative gap in rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis using B-cell receptor sequencing combined with mass spectrometric analysis of complementarity determining regions.
2023
Leuven
Project lead by Jonas De Leeuw : In rheumatoid arthritis (RA), 1/3 patients is negative for RA-related biomarkers. We recently optimized an IgG-based mass spectrometric assay in which peptides were identified able to discriminate seronegative patients from controls. However, sequencing of these peptides proved difficult as databases regarding variable regions are unreliable. We propose B-cell receptor sequencing to identify RA-specific complementary determining regions that have potential as new biomarkers for RA diagnosis.