Eric Meffre, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Immunobiology

General Interests

Human B cell tolerance: from primary immunodeficiencies to autoimmune diseases

Research Interests

Autoantibody production is a characteristic of most autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid arthritis (RA), systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and type 1 diabetes (T1D). These autoantibodies appear in the serum many years before the onset of clinical disease suggesting an early break in B cell tolerance.  We previously established in healthy donors that random V(D)J recombination produce large numbers of autoreactive antibodies.  Most developing B cells that express polyreactive antibodies or B cell receptors (BCRs) are silenced in the bone marrow, and additional autoreactive B cells are removed in the periphery.  We recently analyzed B cell tolerance in RA patients by testing the specificity of recombinant antibodies cloned from single B cells.  RA patients exhibit defective central and peripheral B cell tolerance checkpoints that result in the accumulation of self-reactive mature naïve B cells, likely contributing to the pathogenesis of this disease.  Yet the mechanisms that lead to the generation and survival of these autoreactive mature naïve B cells in RA patients are unknown. more...

Contact

Campus Address:	Amistad 10, 131S
Mailing Address:	Yale University School of Medicine PO BOX 208011 New Haven, CT 06520-8011
Phone:	(203) 737-4535
E-mail:	eric.meffre@yale.edu