Elisa Pin

My research is focused on autoantibody biomarkers discovery and validation within various autoimmune disorders, especially ANCA-associated vasculitis and systemic sclerosis. This is enabled through my affiliation to Nilsson Lab where we develop and apply protein arrays using protein fragments from the Human Protein Atlas.

Anti-Neutrophil Cytoplasmic Antibodies (ANCA)-associated vasculitides (AAV) are rare autoimmune diseases, with a combined annual incidence of 25-33 cases per million people. AAV is characterized by necrotizing inflammation of small blood vessels that affects potentially every organ, requiring prompt initiation of immunosuppressive treatment to limit organ damage. The main focus in my research on ANCA-associated vasculitis is the identification of autoantibodies to improve diagnosis and subclassification of the disease. Moreover, AAV relapsing-remitting pattern poses the challenge of relapse prediction which forces the patients to undergo long term immunosuppressive treatment and consequent side-effects. For this reason, we are currently participating in the EU funded PersonAlisation of RelApse risk in autoimmune DISEase (PARADISE) consortium with the aim to identify novel biomarkers to predict relapses in serum/plasma of AAV patients collected at the Trinity Kidney Center (Dublin, Ireland) and IDIBELL (Barcelona, Spain).

Systemic sclerosis is a rare immune-mediated rheumatic systemic disease characterised by autoimmunity, fibrosis, and endothelial injuries. Autoantibodies, present in ≥ 90% of systemic sclerosis patients, are currently used as serum biomarkers with diagnostic value. However, all these autoantibodies have limited sensitivity and, except anti-Scl-70, limited specificity for systemic sclerosis. Moreover, 10% of the systemic sclerosis patients remain “seronegative” to the currently used autoantibody markers. Our research therefore focuses on identifying new sensitive and specific autoantibody biomarkers to improve systemic sclerosis patient diagnosis and stratification. Moreover, we also aim to identify specific autoantibody biomarkers for lung fibrosis, the most common cause of death in systemic sclerosis. Currently, a study is ongoing where we are analyzing samples from the EUSTAR Center of Linz (Austria), one of the leading centers for the management of patients with systemic sclerosis.

Affiliation:
Div of Affinity Proteomics
Dept of Protein Science
School of Engineering Sciences in Chemistry, Biotechnology and Health (CBH)
KTH Royal Institute of Technology
SciLifeLab

Group members:

Shaghayegh Bayati, PhD student (2020-2023), KTH

Maria Aspenberg, master student (2024-), KTH

Federica Ress, visiting master student (2022), University of Trento, Italy

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Research funding:

• RELapses prevention in chronic autoimmune disease: common mechanisms and co-morbidities (RELENT) consortium. European Union’s Horizon 2020 (2016-2020)

•HEalth data Linkage for ClinicAL benefit (HELICAL) training network. European Union’s Horizon 2020, under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie programme (2020-2023)

•Personalisation of Relapse Risk in Autoimmunity (PARADISE) consortium. ERAPerMed (2023-2025)

•Swedish Heart and Lung Foundation. "The lung fibrosis associated autoantibody repertoire in systemic sclerosis" (2023-2026)