Hi, we're a group of human genome researchers who are starting to work on ankylosing spondylitis. We don't want to sequence genomes, but the T-cell receptors from blood samples of AS patients. After sequencing, each blood draw gives a table with a list of several thousand T-cell receptors and their frequency in the blood.

We hope to find either:
a) a group of T-cell receptors that are increased in frequency during a flare-up of a single patient.
b) a group of T-cell receptors that are common among several patients.

If we find a T-cell receptor that goes up and is common among patients this is not a cure, but at least it would be a starting point in the search for the trigger of the disease. It could also be used to put patients with similar receptors into groups.

Our problem is that we have only around 13 patients until now - we have lots of analysis support and money, but no hospital. One of the patients has a massive clonal expansive of a single T-cell type, but we need more patients to verify if this is more common.

I am not completely sure but I think we can provide the result of the sequencing to the patients, if they want to look at them in Excel and compare with their friends profiles.

Do members of the forum have an idea where we could find patients that would be willing to either get one blood draw or, even better, multiple blood draws (some while they have the active disease, some where they feel better, others while they have other infection, e.g. a cold?) We would only need blood and a description of the disease status of the patient. We are also interested in HLAB27- patients.

Do you know of any hospitals that already have a group of AS patients that are willing to collaborate?

Thanks for any ideas!