Mesenchymal TNFR2 promotes the development of polyarthritis and comorbid heart valve stenosis.

This study demonstrates that arthritis and heart valve stenosis comorbidity, the most common condition among RA and SpA patients, share common mesenchymal requirements converging in the pathogenic activation of resident mesenchymal origin fibroblasts in the TnfARE mouse model. TNFR2 signaling, in this context, orchestrates the molecular mechanisms underlying arthritis and heart valve stenosis manifestation by regulating fibroblasts pathogenic activation status, cell proliferation and pro-inflammatory milieu. Finally this work highlights the complexity of TNFR2 functions since mesenchymal signaling is detrimental, whereas systemic TNFR2 provides protective signals that contain both pathologies 3’ RNA-Seq (QuantSeq) profiling of 2 cell types (SFs,VICs) in two different genotypes (TNF-DeltaARE, ColVIp75f/f-TNF-DeltaARE) and Wild type as control. 3 replicates per group.