摘要：The AutoImmune ThyroiDitis (AITD), known as Hashimoto’s disease, is achronic autoimmune thyroid disease progressively developed to hypothyroidism. TheAITD is characterized by the formation of autoantibodies targeting two specificthyroid antigens, Thyroglobulin (Tg) and Thyroid PerOxidase (TPO). Tg is aprecursor of the thyroid hormones while TPO catalyses their synthesis. The AITDhas a strong genetic predisposition. During the last years, it was found that thesusceptibility to AITD is associated with certain Human Leukocyte Antigens (HLA)class II genes of loci DR and DQ. In the present study, we applied in-houseimmunoinformatic tools to identify peptides originating from Tg and binding to AITDsusceptible alleles: HLA-DR3, HLA-DR4, HLA-DR5, HLA-DQ2 and HLA-DQ8. Fivepeptide fragments containing promiscuous overlapping binders were selected. Thesewere p470, p949, p1948, p2348 and p2583. Only one of them contains a knownepitope (p1948). The rest have not been reported yet. The selected peptide fragmentswill be coupled to monoclonal antibodies specific to inhibitory B cell receptorsdesigned to suppress the production of Tg autoantibodies.
