Technologies

Available for licensing and commercial development are new methods of diagnosing and monitoring the progression or response to therapy of subjects with autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) by quantitating the frequency and determining the function of autoantigen-specific CD4+ T cells in the peripheral blood with HLA-DRB1*0301 tetramers that display the autoepitopes. The invention identifies the immunogenic peptide regions that are targets of the T-cell immune response in two types of autoimmune hepatitis: (1) anti-SLA (soluble liver antigen)-positive autoimmune hepatitis type 3 and (2) anti-LKM (liver kidney microsomal antigen)-positive autoimmune hepatitis type 2. Upon mapping the immunogenic regions within SLA and P450 2D6 using short, overlapping peptides, the inventors discovered at least four immunogenic peptides within SLA and at least one peptide within P450 2D6 that were recognized by HLA-DRB*0301-restricted T cells.