Brown, Grant J., Cañete, Pablo F., Wang, Hao, Medhavy, Arti, Bones, Josiah, Roco, Jonathan A., He, Yuke, Qin, Yuting, Cappello, Jean, Ellyard, Julia I., Bassett, Katharine, Shen, Qian, Burgio, Gaetan, Zhang, Yaoyuan, Turnbull, Cynthia, Meng, Xiangpeng, Wu, Phil, Cho, Eun, Miosge, Lisa A., Andrews, T. Daniel, Field, Matt A., Tvorogov, Denis, Lopez, Angel F., Babon, Jeffrey J., López, Cristina Aparicio, Gónzalez-Murillo, África, Garulo, Daniel Clemente, Pascual, Virginia, Levy, Tess, Mallack, Eric J., Calame, Daniel G., Lotze, Timothy, Lupski, James R., Ding, Huihua, Ullah, Tomalika R., Walters, Giles D., Koina, Mark E., Cook, Matthew C., Shen, Nan, de Lucas Collantes, Carmen, Corry, Ben, Gantier, Michael P., Athanasopoulos, Vicki, and Vinuesa, Carola G. (2022) TLR7 gain-of-function genetic variation causes human lupus. Nature, 605. pp. 349-356.

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Abstract

Although circumstantial evidence supports enhanced Toll-like receptor 7 (TLR7) signalling as a mechanism of human systemic autoimmune disease evidence of lupus-causing TLR7 gene variants is lacking. Here we describe human systemic lupus erythematosus caused by a TLR7 gain-of-function variant. TLR7 is a sensor of viral RNA and binds to guanosine. We identified a de novo, previously undescribed missense TLR7Y264H variant in a child with severe lupus and additional variants in other patients with lupus. The TLR7Y264H variant selectively increased sensing of guanosine and 2',3'-cGMP1 and was sufficient to cause lupus when introduced into mice. We show that enhanced TLR7 signalling drives aberrant survival of B cell receptor (BCR)-activated B cells, and in a cell-intrinsic manner, accumulation of CD11c+ age-associated B cells and germinal centre B cells. Follicular and extrafollicular helper T cells were also increased but these phenotypes were cell-extrinsic. Deficiency of MyD88 (an adaptor protein downstream of TLR7) rescued autoimmunity, aberrant B cell survival, and all cellular and serological phenotypes. Despite prominent spontaneous germinal-centre formation in Tlr7Y264H mice, autoimmunity was not ameliorated by germinal-centre deficiency, suggesting an extrafollicular origin of pathogenic B cells. We establish the importance of TLR7 and guanosine-containing self-ligands for human lupus pathogenesis, which paves the way for therapeutic TLR7 or MyD88 inhibition.

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