1. University of California San Francisco, School of Medicine, Department of Surgery, Immunogenetics and Transplantation Laboratory at Davies Medical Center, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
2. ¹Harvard Medical School, Schepens Eye Research Institute, 20 Staniford Street, Boston, MA, 02114
3. ^*University of California San Francisco, School of Medicine, Department of Dermatology, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.

Abstract

It has become clear that skin infiltrating autoreactive CD4⁺ T helper cells play a crucial role in the initiation of alopecia areata. However, the natures of the pathogenic T cell clones as well as of the skin antigen they recognize remain obscure. Here, we analyzed the T cell receptor repertoire expressed in the spleen of diseased mice. We consistently observed the dominant expansion of a limited set of T cell clones expressing V38.2/J2.5 T cell receptor rearrangement. We conclude that T cell response in mice alopecia areata is markedly oligoclonal; a feature that may permit the design of selective immunotherapy.