T cells promoting transitions toward autoimmunity

Autoimmune disease presents a major health hazard to our population and can be devastating to individual patients. To date, there is no therapy that can prevent or cure autoimmune disease. The proposed studies will investigate how naïve T cells promote the transition from sub-clinical autoimmunity to autoimmune disease, focusing on this transition in individuals at-risk for type 1 diabetes and in individuals with Down syndrome, which is a genetic condition at high-risk for developing autoimmune disease.