Affiliations: [a] IRCCS Burlo Garofolo, Via dell'Istria, 34100, Trieste, TS, Italy | [b] Dipartimento di Biologia, Università di Trieste, Via E. Weiss 2, 34100 Trieste, TS, Italy | [c] Bioscience Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory, MS M888, Los Alamos, NM 87545, USA
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: R. Marzari, Dipartimento di Biologia, Università di Trieste, via E. Weiss 2, 34127 Trieste, Italy. Tel.: +39 040 398991; Fax: +39 040 398991; E-mail: marzari@icgeb.trieste.it.
Abstract: Celiac disease (CD) is an autoimmune enteropathy characterized by intestinal malabsorption and immunological responses to dietary gliadins and an auto antigen located in the endomysium. The latter has recently been identified as the enzyme tissue transglutaminase (tTG). The linkage between gliadins, tTG and the autoimmune response has still to be clarified. In this work we report the production and analysis of a phage antibody library from the peripheral blood lymphocytes (PLB) of a CD patient. The library contained polyreactive and monoreactive antibodies to α-gliadin, to the dietary antigenβ-lactoglobulin, but not to tTG. The majority of the VH regions of the anti-α-gliadin antibodies belonged to the VH 4 family. The possibility of exploiting phage display antibodies as tools to study the molecular events associated with CD is discussed.
