Jianhua Zhang, PhD

University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL

2002 Why the Lupus Immune System Reacts to Its Own DNA

In lupus, a defect develops in the body’s T cells, which are designed to attack all foreign cells.

Dr. Zhang’s laboratory has found that mice who produce too much of a certain inhibitory protein in T cells (c-FLIP) develop a syndrome that resembles lupus in humans.

With his LRI grant, Dr. Zhang studied and further described the cellular and molecular mechanisms that prompt these disease-related changes—and helped to identify new molecules that might serve as targets for lupus drugs.

Select publications:

Altered thymic selection by overexpressing cellular FLICE inhibitory protein in T cells causes lupus-like syndrome in a BALB/c but not C57BL/6 strain. Qiao G, Li Z, Minto AW, Shia J, Yang L, Bao L, Tschopp J, Gao JX, Wang J, Quigg RJ, Zhang J.

Endonuclease G is required for early embryogenesis and normal apoptosis in mice. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2003 100(26):15782-7. Zhang J, Dong M, Li L, Fan Y, Pathre P, Dong J, Lou D, Wells JM, Olivares-Villagomez D, Van Kaer L, Wang X, Xu M.

Role of endonuclease G in neuronal excitotoxicity in mice. Neurosci Lett. 2004 Jul 8;364(3):203-7. Wu Y, Dong M, Toepfer NJ, Fan Y, Xu M, Zhang J.

Rev. July 2010

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