Natural Triterpene Glycosides for Antibody Recognition

Abstract

Multiple sclerosis is an autoimmune disease that affects the central nervous system. The key role of the glycosylation in disease pathogenesis has been previously studied and the synthetic N-glucosylated peptide CSF114(Glc) proved its efficiency in autoantibody recognition in the sera of multiple sclerosis patients. Herein, pure natural triterpene glycosides containing different glycosyl moieties were isolated and tested in multiple sclerosis patientsʼ sera to better understand the role of glycosylation. They were selected taking into account the nature and complexity of their osidic part. Five triterpene glycosides were isolated from several plants with more than 95 % purity. The interaction between these glycosides and autoantibodies was evaluated in an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay measuring IgG and IgM levels in multiple sclerosis patients and healthy blood donors, and the results were compared with those of CSF114(Glc). For each antigen, Mann Whitney and receiver operating characteristic-based analysis were performed to evaluate any statistical significance of the results. The five natural triterpene glycosides showed good capacity to recognize IgMs (sensitivity up to 38 %) with a high specificity (88.9 %) for multiple sclerosis patients.