Hans-Peter Lenhof

Background Autoantibodies against self-antigens have been associated not only with autoimmune diseases, but also with cancer and are even found in healthy individuals. The mechanism causing the autoantibody response remains elusive for the majority of the immunogenic antigens. To deepen the understanding of autoantibody responses, we ask whether natural-occurring, autoimmunity-associated and tumor-associated antigens have structural or biological features related to the immune response.

Background Expression profiling provides new insights into regulatory and metabolic processes and in particular into pathogenic mechanisms associated with diseases. Besides genes, non-coding transcripts as microRNAs (miRNAs) gained increasing relevance in the last decade.