Cladribine treatment specifically impairs peripheral blood memory B cell clones and clonal expansion in multiple sclerosis patients

We performed next-generation sequencing of Ig heavy chain transcripts and Ig mass spectrometry in cladribine-treated patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (n = 8) at baseline and after 6 and 12 months of treatment in order to generate Ig transcriptome and Ig peptide libraries. Ig transcriptomes were analyzed with the nf-core/airrflow bioinformatics pipeline. Ig peptides were overlapped with the corresponding IGH transcriptome in order to analyze B cell clones on a combined transcriptome and proteome level.