Investigation of Rituximab Clinical Response in Multiple Sclerosis Patients

Background and aim: multiple sclerosis (ms) is a chronic disease, in which an abnormal response of the body’s immune system is directed against the central nervous system (cns). in recent years, accumulated evidence emphasizes the pathophysiological role of b cells in the progression of ms. rituximab is a human-murine chimeric anti-cd20-antibody, originally approved for b-cell lymphoma. here we aim to identify the molecular signature of rtx clinical response in ms patients through high throughput data available in geo datasetsmethods: since there was no data available for ms, we had to find other related datasets. in this study we analyzed some of the baseline samples of rnaseq data using https://usegalaxy.eu for detecting differential gene expression between rituximab responsive and unresponsive groups in another autoimmune disease.results: obtained data analysis showed that many of the significantly differential expressed genes and lncrnas includes ac136475.1, cxcr2, marcks, and ifitm3. most of these genes are related to immune pathways like fc gamma r-mediated phagocytosis, cytokine-cytokine receptor interaction and interferon gamma signaling.conclusion: hence, in order to take one step toward predicting responsiveness of rituximab in autoimmune diseases before prescription, we have to seek more precisely in immune related coding and noncoding genes.