Present difficulties and future promise of MHC multimers in autoimmune exploration

Class I tetramers have been used to track cytotoxic T cells during bacterial and viral infections. During the past year, the use of such molecules has revealed important information about the role of CD8 + T cells in autoimmune diabetes. Furthermore, class II multimers have been produced and successfully used to stain autoreactive CD4 + T cells from patients with rheumatoid arthritis or Borrelia - burgdorferi -induced Lyme arthritis.