{"doi":"10.3389/fimmu.2021.701066","title":"Dependence on Autophagy for Autoreactive Memory B Cells in the Development of Pristane-Induced Lupus","abstract":"The production of autoantibodies by autoreactive B cells plays a major role in the pathogenesis of lupus. Increases in memory B cells have been observed in human lupus patients and autoimmune lpr mice. Autophagy is required for the maintenance of memory B cells against viral infections; however, whether autophagy regulates the persistence of autoantigen-specific memory B cells and the development of lupus remains to be determined. Here we show that memory B cells specific for autoantigens can be detected in autoimmune lpr mice and a pristane-induced lupus mouse model. Interestingly, B cell-specific deletion of Atg7 led to significant loss of autoreactive memory B cells and reduced autoantibody production in pristane-treated mice. Autophagy deficiency also attenuated the development of autoimmune glomerulonephritis and pulmonary inflammation after pristane treatment. Adoptive transfer of wild type autoreactive memory B cells restored autoantibody production in Atg7-deficient recipients. These data suggest that autophagy is important for the persistence of autoreactive memory B cells in mediating autoantibody responses. Our results suggest that autophagy could be targeted to suppress autoreactive memory B cells and ameliorate humoral autoimmunity.","journal":"Frontiers in Immunology","year":2021,"id":191099,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":13,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9464,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":756037,"name":"Robert Sharp","orcid":"0000-0002-8970-0155","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":756710,"name":"Jeffrey M. Wang","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":756038,"name":"Feng Yin","orcid":"0000-0001-7407-9047","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":442353,"name":"Jin Wang","orcid":"0000-0002-3116-0838","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":311391,"name":"Min Chen","orcid":"0000-0002-0093-9056","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":249839,"name":"Albert Jang","orcid":"0000-0002-0461-6174","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":76,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:49:31.121780Z","pmid":"34335611","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}