Genetically engineering regulatory T cells to treat systemic lupus erythematosus

Regulatory T cells (Tregs) play an important role in maintaining immune system homeostasis. In particular, antigen-specific Tregs have been shown to be able to specifically and potently suppress antigen autoreactivity, suggesting there is potential for the development of antigen-specific Tregs to treat autoimmune diseases such as lupus nephritis. This thesis describes a novel method of identifying autoantigen-specific T cell receptors (TCRs) using high throughput single cell sequencing and have shown that our autoantigen-specific Tregs are able to potently suppress and prevent disease progression of lupus nephritis in mouse models of disease.