Thread by @magalinoval

🧵1/11 Our newest paper on the "Superantigen (SAg) hypothesis" leading to autoimmunity and neurotoxin-like motifs in post-COVID syndromes, including MIS-C and Long Covid, is now online! @ArditiMd @IvetBahar @CedarsSinai #LongCovid #MISC #SARSCoV2
frontiersin.org/articles/10.33…

2/11 This is how our journey evolved. The idea for this manuscript was based on our original discovery of a "SAg-like motif" and "neurotoxin-like" motifs in SARS-CoV-2 Spike.
BioRxiv (May 2020) biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

3/11 This research was then published in PNAS (September 2020) where we showed the potential role of this "SAg-like motif" not only in MIS-C, but also in adults patients with severe COVID.
pnas.org/doi/full/10.10…

4/11 We further discussed the hypothesis that the “SAg-like motif” in SARS-CoV-2 may play a crucial role not only in MIS-C but also in severe COVID-19 in our “Paradigms and Perspectives” published in JACI (October 2020), sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

5/11 This hypothesis and our original findings were the basis of an article published in National Geographic October 2020. You can read it here: nationalgeographic.com/science/articl…

6/11 In Nov 2020, we deposited in bioRxiv our 1st report showing TCR repertoire skewing in MIS-C patients & expansion of TRBV11-2 T cells, which we predicted by computational studies to interact with the SARS-CoV-2 “SAg-like motif”.
biorxiv.org/content/10.110…

7/11 Which was then published in JCI, and we also showed HLA class I–associated expansion of TRBV11-2 T cells in MIS-C patients.
jci.org/articles/view/…

8/11 Using proteomics, RNA-sequencing, autoantibody arrays and B cell receptor sequencing, we then identified strong autoimmune signatures and pathogenic pathways associated with MIS-C. This work was published in JCI.
jci.org/articles/view/…

9/11 We next showed that an anti-SEB monoclonal antibody can potentially bind the “SAg-like motif" and block SARS-CoV-2 cellular infection in vitro.
in BioRxiv (Nov 2020) and published in Structure in 2021
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

10/11 all this work was highlighted and discussed by @rkhamsi in an article at "The Atlantic". You can read it on this link:
theatlantic.com/science/archiv…

11/11 Finally, recent scientific advances on Long COVID led us to hypothesize that repeated exposure to the "SAg-like motif" may lead to autoimmunity & neurotoxins may lead to the neurological findings in PACS. These are the 2 key concepts of our new Frontiers immunology paper.