{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.03701188455008489, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0006791171477079797, 'mean_word_length': 5.5612472160356345, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Biased signaling by thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor–specific antibodies determines thyrocyte survival in autoimmunity

Different autoantibodies against the thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor have distinct effects on receptor trafficking and thyrocyte survival. Antibodies determine thyrocyte fate Graves’ disease (GD) is an autoimmune disorder characterized by hyperthyroidism and the presence of autoantibodies against the thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor (TSHR), which are classified as stimulatory, blocking, or neutral and which bind to different receptor epitopes. Binding of TSH to the TSHR, a member of the GPCR superfamily, leads to the activation of G proteins and, in response to receptor phosphorylation, the activation of β-arrestin–dependent signaling. Through imaging analysis, Morshed et al. showed that exposure of thyrocytes to the stimulatory antibody S-TSHR-Ab led to G protein signaling, receptor internalization, and endosomal formation. In contrast, a neutral antibody (C-TSHR-Ab) induced β-arrestin–dependent signaling, but not G protein–dependent signaling, had defective trafficking, and accumulated intracellularly. This, in turn, triggered thyrocyte death by apoptosis. Together, these data suggest a mechanism by which different autoantibodies differentially affect thyrocyte homeostasis, which may have implications for the treatment of GD. The thyroid-stimulating hormone receptor (TSHR) is a heterotrimeric guanine nucleotide–binding protein (G protein)–coupled receptor (GPCR). Autoimmune hyperthyroidism, commonly known as Graves’ disease (GD), is caused by stimulating autoantibodies to the TSHR. We previously described TSHR-specific antibodies (TSHR-Abs) in GD that recognize linear epitopes in the cleavage region of the TSHR ectodomain (C-TSHR-Abs) and induce thyroid cell apoptosis instead of stimulating the TSHR. We found that C-TSHR-Abs entered the cell through clathrin-mediated endocytosis but did not trigger endosomal maturation and failed to undergo normal vesicular sorting and trafficking. We found that stimulating TSHR-Abs (S-TSHR-Abs) activated Gαs and, to a lesser extent, Gαq but that C-TSHR-Abs failed to activate any of the G proteins normally activated in response to TSH. Furthermore, specific inhibition of G proteins in the presence of S-TSHR-mAbs or TSH resulted in a similar failure of endosomal maturation as that caused by C-TSHR-mAbs. Hence, whereas S-TSHR-mAbs and TSH contributed to normal vesicular trafficking of TSHR through the activation of major G proteins, the C-TSHR-Abs resulted in GRK2- and β-arrestin-1–dependent biased signaling, which is interpreted as a danger signal by the cell. Our observations suggest that the binding of antibodies to different TSHR epitopes may decrease cell survival. Antibody-induced cell injury and the response to cell death amplify the loss of self-tolerance, which most likely helps to perpetuate GPCR-mediated autoimmunity.