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Guidelines For Pre-Clinical Assessment Of The Acetylcholine Receptor-Specific Passive Transfer Myasthenia Gravis Model - Recommendations For Methods And Experimental Designs., Linda L. Kusner, Mario Losen, Angela Vincent, Jon Lindstrom, Socrates Tzartos, Konstantinos Lazaridis, Pilar Martinez-Martinez

Pharmacology and Physiology Faculty Publications

Antibodies against the muscle acetylcholine receptor (AChR) are the most common cause of myasthenia gravis (MG). Passive transfer of AChR antibodies from MG patients into animals reproduces key features of human disease, including antigenic modulation of the AChR, complement-mediated damage of the neuromuscular junction, and muscle weakness. Similarly, AChR antibodies generated by active immunization in experimental autoimmune MG models can subsequently be passively transferred to other animals and induce weakness. The passive transfer model is useful to test therapeutic strategies aimed at the effector mechanism of the autoantibodies. Here we summarize published and unpublished experience using the AChR passive transfer …