AIRE deficiency, from preclinical models to human APECED disease.

Autoimmune polyendocrinopathy candidiasis ectodermal dystrophy (APECED) is a rare life-threatening autoimmune disease that attacks multiple organs and has its onset in childhood. It is an inherited condition caused by a variety of mutations in the autoimmune regulator ( gene that encodes a protein whose function has been uncovered by the generation and study of -KO mice. These provided invaluable insights into the link between expression in medullary thymic epithelial cells (mTECs), and the broad spectrum of self-antigens that these cells express and present to the developing thymocytes. However, these murine models poorly recapitulate all phenotypic aspects of human APECED. Unlike -KO mice, the recently generated -KO rat model presents visual features, organ lymphocytic infiltrations and production of autoantibodies that resemble those observed in APECED patients, making the rat model a main research asset. In addition, models of AIRE-dependent self-antigen expression in primary mTECs have been successfully set up. Thymus organoids based on pluripotent stem cell-derived TECs from APECED patients are also emerging, and constitute a promising tool to engineer -corrected mTECs and restore the generation of regulatory T cells. Eventually, these new models will undoubtedly lead to main advances in the identification and assessment of specific and efficient new therapeutic strategies aiming to restore immunological tolerance in APECED patients.