Niyaz Yoosuf

BioInvent International AB · Computational Biology

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease characterized by systemic inflammation and is mediated by multiple immune cell types. In this work, we aimed to determine the relevance of changes in cell proportions in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) during the development of disease and following treatment. Samples from healthy blood...

Background Methotrexate (MTX) is the first line treatment for rheumatoid arthritis (RA), but failure of satisfying treatment response occurs in a significant proportion of patients. Here we present a longitudinal multi-omics study aimed at detecting molecular and cellular processes in peripheral blood associated with a successful methotrexate treat...

Anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody (ANCA)-associated vasculitis (AAV) is an autoimmune disease involving autoreactivity to proteinase 3 (PR3) as demonstrated by presence of ANCAs. While autoantibodies are screened for diagnosis, autoreactive T cells and their features are less well-studied. Here, we investigated PR3-specific CD4+T cell responses...

Background Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease characterized by systemic inflammation and is mediated by multiple immune cell types. In this work we aimed to determine the relevance of changes in cell proportions in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) during development of disease and during treatment. Methods Samples from hea...

We aimed to search for common features in the autoreactive T cell receptor (TCR) repertoire in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), focusing on the newly identified candidate antigen citrullinated Tenascin C (cit-TNC). Mononuclear cells from peripheral blood or synovial fluid of eight RA-patients positive for the RA-associated HLA-DRB1*04:01 al...

Objectives To search for common features in the autoreactive T cell receptor (TCR)-repertoire in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), focusing on the newly identified candidate antigen citrullinated Tenascin C (cit-TNC). Methods Mononuclear cells from peripheral blood or synovial fluid of eight RA-patients positive for the RA-associated HLA-DR...

Objectives Advances in immunotherapy by blocking TNF have remarkably improved treatment outcomes for rheumatoid arthritis patients. Although treatment specifically targets TNF, the downstream mechanisms of immune suppression are not completely understood. The aim of this study was to detect biomarkers and expression signatures of treatment response...

Background ANCA-associated vasculitis (AAV) with proteinase 3 (PR3) ANCA is genetically associated with HLA-DP [1], is often relapsing in nature, and has a predisposition for kidneys, lungs and ear-nose-throat involvement [2]. Despite the presence of PR3+ANCA, indicating CD4+T-cell help in the disease, the knowledge about autoreactive CD4+T cells i...

Background Advances in immunotherapy by blocking TNF have remarkably improved treatment outcomes for rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients. Although treatment specifically targets TNF-α, the downstream mechanisms of immune suppression are not completely understood, and the reason for the reduced efficacy in a significant fraction of patients remains u...

Objectives Advances in immunotherapy by blocking TNF have remarkably improved treatment outcomes for rheumatoid arthritis patients. Although treatment specifically targets TNF, the downstream mechanisms of immune suppression are not completely understood. The present study was aimed to detect biomarkers and expression signatures of treatment respon...

Autoimmunity to citrullinated autoantigens forms a critical component of disease pathogenesis in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Presence of anti-citrullinated protein antibodies (ACPAs) in patients has high diagnostic value. Recently, several citrullinated antigen specific CD4+T cells have been described. However, detailed studies of their T-cell recep...

Over the past decade, the available crystal structures have almost doubled in Protein Data Bank (PDB) providing the research community with a series of similar crystal structures to choose from for future docking studies. With the steady growth in the number of high-resolution three-dimensional protein structures, ligand docking-based virtual scree...

Background: Distinguishing ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) from invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC) regions in clinical biopsies constitutes a diagnostic challenge. Spatial transcriptomics (ST) is an in situ capturing method, which allows quantification and visualization of transcriptomes in individual tissue sections. In the past, studies have shown...

Background: Relapsing fever borreliae are vector-borne bacteria responsible for febrile infection in humans in North America, Africa, Asia, and in the Iberian Peninsula in Europe. Relapsing fever borreliae are phylogenetically closely related, yet they differ in pathogenicity and vectors. Their long-term taxonomy, based on geography and vector grou...

Since the discovery of Mimivirus, the founding member of the family Mimiviridae, three lineages, A–C, have been delineated among the mimiviruses of amoebae. To date, all giant viruses with annotated genomes have been isolated from water samples. Here, we describe the genome of two mimiviruses, Terra1 virus and Terra2 virus, which were recovered by...

Giant viruses of amoebae were discovered 10 years ago and led to the description of two new viral families: Mimiviridae and Marseilleviridae. These viruses exhibit remarkable features, including large capsids and genomes that are similar in size to those of small bacteria and their large genetic repertoires include genes that are unique among virus...

The 1,021,348 base pair genome sequence of the Acanthamoeba polyphaga moumouvirus, a new member of the Mimiviridae family infecting Acanthamoeba polyphaga, is reported. The moumouvirus represents a third lineage beside mimivirus and megavirus. Thereby, it is a new member of the recently proposed Megavirales order. This giant virus was isolated from...

The family "Marseilleviridae" is a new proposed taxon for giant viruses that infect amoebae. Its first member, Acanthamoeba polyphaga marseillevirus (APMaV), was isolated in 2007 by culturing on amoebae a water sample collected from a cooling tower in Paris, France. APMaV has an icosahedral shape with a diameter of ≈250 nm. Its genome is a double-s...