Skin lesions on the arm of a patient with sclerodermaWIKIMEDIA, AVMThe immune system’s attempts to eradicate cancer may inadvertently lead to autoimmunity, according to a report published today (December 5) in Science. At least, that appears to be the case for the autoimmune disease scleroderma. Scientists have found that antibodies produced by the body to recognize a mutant protein in tumor cells also recognize the protein’s normal counterpart, and can cause damage to healthy tissues.
“This work provides evidence for a theory of the disease [scleroderma] that is quite off-the-beaten-track and unexpected,” said David Botstein, a professor of genomics at Princeton University, who was not involved in the work. “This has got to be seen, despite the amount of effort involved, as a preliminary result,” he stressed, “but at the same time, I think the idea has major implications not only for scleroderma but also for cancer.”
Scleroderma is an autoimmune disorder that tends to afflict middle-aged and older adults and is characterized by fibrosis of the skin and other major organs, including lungs, muscle, blood vessels, and kidneys. The fibrosis is driven by autoantibodies that recognize one of three ubiquitously expressed proteins—RNA polymerase III subunit A (RPC1), topoisomerase 1, ...
