IMMUNOLOGY2026™ Conference Recordings For Attendees-Epigenetic noise for immune tolerance

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Video Summary

The talk described how thymic epithelial cells help prevent autoimmunity by “projecting self” to developing T cells. Using human thymus samples and multi-omic analyses, the speaker showed that many autoimmune-risk variants affect gene regulation in the thymus, not just in immune cells. NF-kappaB/Rela helps create accessible regulatory regions at tissue-specific antigen genes, while AIRE acts downstream to drive their expression. A surprising finding was that many key genes are controlled by chromatin “noise” in unstable regions enriched for poly-A tracts, and this instability is normally supported by repression of p53. When p53 activity was artificially increased, chromatin became more stable, tissue-specific antigen expression dropped, and self-reactive T cells escaped, causing multi-organ autoimmunity. The overall model proposes that thymic epithelial cells use NF-kappaB, chromatin instability, and AIRE together to build immune tolerance.

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Date April 17, 2026 4:15 PM - 5:45 PM

Room 104C

Session Regulation of Immune Cell Differentiation, Sponsored by the Korean Assoc. of Immunologists (KAI) and the Assoc. of Korean Immunologists in America (AKIA)

Speaker Andrew Koh

Track Lymphocyte Differentiation and Peripheral Maintenance (LYM)

Year 2026

Keywords

thymic epithelial cells

autoimmunity

AIRE

NF-kappaB/Rela

chromatin instability

p53 repression

April 17, 2026 4:15 PM - 5:45 PM

104C

Regulation of Immune Cell Differentiation, Sponsored by the Korean Assoc. of Immunologists (KAI) and the Assoc. of Korean Immunologists in America (AKIA)

Andrew Koh

Lymphocyte Differentiation and Peripheral Maintenance (LYM)

2026