Sharon Fleischer, Trevor R Nash, Manuel A Tamargo, Roberta I Lock, Gabriela Venturini, Margaretha Morsink, Vanessa Li, Morgan J Lamberti, Pamela L Graney, Martin Liberman, Youngbin Kim, Richard Z Zhuang, Jaron Whitehead, Richard A Friedman, Rajesh K Soni, Jonathan G Seidman, Christine E Seidman, Laura Geraldino-Pardilla, Robert Winchester, Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic
Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a highly heterogenous autoimmune disease that affects multiple organs, including the heart. The mechanisms by which myocardial injury develops in SLE, however, remain poorly understood. Here we engineered human cardiac tissues and cultured them with IgG fractions containing autoantibodies from SLE patients with and without myocardial involvement. We observed unique binding patterns of IgG from two patient subgroups: (i) patients with severe myocardial inflammation exhibited enhanced binding to apoptotic cells within cardiac tissues subjected to stress, and (ii) patients with systolic dysfunction exhibited enhanced binding to the surfaces of viable cardiomyocytes...
March 12, 2024: bioRxiv