Tissue distribution and clonal diversity of the T and B cell repertoire in type 1 diabetes.

The adaptive immune repertoire plays a critical role in type 1 diabetes (T1D) pathogenesis. However, efforts to characterize B cell and T cell receptor (TCR) profiles in T1D subjects have been largely limited to peripheral blood sampling and restricted to known antigens. To address this, we collected pancreatic draining lymph nodes (pLN), "irrelevant" nonpancreatic draining lymph nodes, peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC), and splenocytes from T1D subjects ( = 18) and control donors ( = 9) as well as pancreatic islets from 1 T1D patient; from these tissues, we collected purified CD4 conventional T cells (Tconv), CD4 Treg, CD8 T cells, and B cells.