Jeffrey A Mosenson, Andrew Zloza, John D Nieland, Elizabeth Garrett-Mayer, Jonathan M Eby, Erica J Huelsmann, Previn Kumar, Cecele J Denman, Andrew T Lacek, Frederick J Kohlhapp, Ahmad Alamiri, Tasha Hughes, Steven D Bines, Howard L Kaufman, Andreas Overbeck, Shikhar Mehrotra, Claudia Hernandez, Michael I Nishimura, Jose A Guevara-Patino, I Caroline Le Poole
Vitiligo is an autoimmune disease characterized by destruction of melanocytes, leaving 0.5% of the population with progressive depigmentation. Current treatments offer limited efficacy. We report that modified inducible heat shock protein 70 (HSP70i) prevents T cell-mediated depigmentation. HSP70i is the molecular link between stress and the resultant immune response. We previously showed that HSP70i induces an inflammatory dendritic cell (DC) phenotype and is necessary for depigmentation in vitiligo mouse models...
February 27, 2013: Science Translational Medicine