TUESDAY, Jan. 23 (HealthDay News) -- Researchers have identified a key network of genes that may be important for control of autoimmune diseases such as type 1 diabetes, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis, according to a report released Jan. 21 in an advance online publication of Nature.
Richard Young, Ph.D., from the Whitehead Institute at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Mass., and colleagues used microarray technology to scan the genome for genes regulated by Foxp3, a gene that controls regulatory T-cell function. Failure of regulatory T-cell function is involved in the development of multiple autoimmune diseases.
The investigators identified about 30 genes that were controlled by Fox3p in T cells, one of which was Ptpn22. This gene has been previously linked to autoimmune diseases including type 1 diabetes, lupus and others, but its role in regulatory T-cell function was not known.
"Autoimmune diseases take a tremendous toll on human health, but on a strictly molecular level, autoimmunity is a black box," Young said in a statement. "When we discover the molecular mechanisms that drive these conditions, we can migrate from treating symptoms to developing treatments for the disease itself."
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