Antigen presentation

We have shown that autophagy play an active role in the presentation of endogenous antigens (see English et al., 2009). Recently, we discovered a novel pathway of presentation involved in the handling of mitochondrial antigens (see Matheoud et al., 2016). This pathway referred to as MitAP (mitochondrial antigen presentation) is actively inhibited by two Parkinson's disease-related proteins, PINK1 and Parkin, highlighting the contribution of autoimmune mechanisms in the etiology of the disease. This discovery opens ways to develop new drugs and therapeutic approaches. We are currently developing a large-throughput drug screening assay to test a library of over 200 000 molecules to identify drugs that could inhibit MitAP.

Parkinson's disease and autoimmune diseases

We are interested in studying the involvement of MitAP in the development of Parkinson's disease and other autoimmune diseases using cell and animal models.

• 2016                Conférencier invité, Penn State University, Philadelphia, USA
• 2016                Conférencier invité, From Basic to Life Science, Dubrovnik, Croatia
• 2017                Conférencier invité, Keystone Symposia on Autophagy, Copper Mountain, USA
• 2017                Conférencier invité, Gordon Conference on Parkinson's Disease, Maine, USA

• English L, Chemali M, Duron J, Rondeau C, Laplante A, Gingras D, Alexander D, Leib D, Norbury C, Lippé R, Desjardins M. Autophagy enhances the presentation of endogenous viral antigens on MHC class I molecules during HSV-1 infection. Nature Immunol 10:480-487, 2009
• Boulais J, Trost M, Landry C, Dieckmann R, Levy E, Soldati T, Michnick S, Thibault P, Desjardins M. Molecular characterization of the evolution of phagosomes. Mol Sys Biol 6: 423, 2010 doi: 10.1038/msb.2010.80.
• Radtke K, English L, Rondeau C, Leib D, Lippé R, Desjardins M. Inhibition of the host              translation shut-off response by Herpes virus 1 triggers Nuclear envelope-derived autophagy. J Virol 87:3990-3997, 2013
• Matheoud D, Moredin N, Desjardins M*, Descoteaux A*.  Leishmania parasite cleave the SNARE protein VAMP8 to inhibit crosspresentation.  Cell Host and Microbes 14:15-25, 2013

* co-corresponding authors

• Bell C, English L, Boulais J, Chemali M, Caron-Lizotte O, Desjardins M*, Thibault P*.  Quantitative proteomics reveals the induction of mitophagy in TNF-a activated macrophages.  Mol Cell Proteomics 12:2394-2407, 2013

*co-corresponding authors

Matheoud D, Sugiura A, Bellemare-Pelletier, Laplante A, Rondeau C, Chemali M, Fazel A, Bergeron JJ, Trudeau LE, Burelle Y, Gagnon E, McBride H*, Desjardins M*. Parkinson's disease-related proteins PINK1 and Parkin repress mitochondrial antigen presentation. Cell 166:314-327, 2016 *co-corresponding authors