The ability to discriminate between self and nonself antigens is vital to the functioning of the
immune system as a specific defense against invading microorganisms. Failure of the …

Our increasing understanding of the pathophysiology of autoimmune disease has revealed
a number of checkpoints that can be targeted with immune therapy, including key mediators …

The immune system responds in a regulated fashion to microbes and eliminates them, but it
does not respond to self-antigens. Several regulatory mechanisms function to terminate …

The mammalian immune system has an extraordinary potential for making receptors that
sense and neutralize any chemical entity entering the body. Inevitably, some of these …

Autoimmunity is mediated by a variety of mechanisms, molecular and cellular events, and
responses. Predisposition to a given autoimmune response requires the requisite allele (s) …

In recent years the molecular basis of antigen recognition by T cells has been unraveled and
the various pathways that control T cell activation and functional specialization have been …

It is generally assumed that the main job of the immune system is to distinguish between
what is" self" and what is" not self." Once the distinction has been made," self" is preserved …

The αβ T cell receptor (TCR) recognizes antigens that are presented by major
histocompatibility complex (MHC)-encoded cell surface molecules by binding to both the …

The ability to distinguish" self" from" non-self" is central to the normal function of the immune
system. An essential condition for self-nonself discrimination is the immunological tolerance …

Efforts to understand autoimmunity have been pursued relentlessly for several decades. It
has become apparent that the immune system evolved multiple mechanisms for controlling …