As a MD resident and then PhD student I have been learning immunology of autoimmune diseases and clinical aspects. During this period my work was dedicated to characterize autoantibodies in SSc and in particular to study their prevalence and clinical associations:
Sobanski V, Dauchet L, Lefèvre G, Lambert M, Morell-Dubois S, Sy T, Hachulla E, Hatron PY, Launay D, Dubucquoi S. Prevalence of anti-RNA polymerase III antibodies in systemic sclerosis: a new French cohort, systematic review and meta-analysis. Arthritis Rheum. 2014 66(2):407-417; doi: 10.1002/art.38219
⇒ To my knowledge, it was the first time that a systematic review and meta-analysis was performed on an autoantibody prevalence in SSc. At this time, anti-RNA polymerase III antibodies were not well characterized and different methods for screening resulted in high discrepancies between centres. My work showed that there was a high heterogeneity in their prevalence worldwide which remains largely unexplained (after adjustment for baseline SSc characteristics or methods testing) suggesting the implication of genetic background or environmental factors.
Sobanski V, Giovannelli J, Lynch BM, Schreiber BE, Nihtyanova SI, Harvey J, Handler CE, Denton CP, Coghlan JG. Characteristics and Survival of Anti-U1 RNP Antibody- Positive Patients With Connective Tissue Disease-Associated Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2016;68(2):484-93;
doi: 10.1002/art.39432
⇒ During my fellowship in the Centre for Rheumatology and Connective Tissue Diseases at University College London, I set up a large database of >3,000 patients who underwent a right heart catheterization at this national reference centre for pulmonary hypertension. I thoroughly reviewed each case and identified >1,000 patients with a connective tissue disease. This work enabled to study specifically patients with anti-U1RNP antibodies (an autoantibody shared between patients with various connective tissue diseases) suggesting that there was a serological homogeneity in patients with pulmonary hypertension. I have been invited to present the results in different congresses (Pulmonary Hypertension forum and International Workshop on Scleroderma Research).

We conducted a study to identify and characterize homogeneous phenotypes of patients with ScS without any a priori assumptions using cluster analysis, and compare survival between the different identified groups:
Sobanski V, Giovannelli J , Allanore Y, Riemekasten G, Airò P, Vettori S, Cozzi F, Distler O, Matucci-Cerinic M, Denton C, Launay D, Hachulla E and EUSTAR collaborators. Phenotypes determined by cluster analysis and their survival in the prospective EUSTAR cohort of patients with systemic sclerosis. Arthritis Rheumatol 2019 Sep;71(9):1553-1570; doi: 10.1002/art.40906
⇒ This was a multicenter study (137 centers) of patients in the prospective EUSTAR cohort including ~7,000 patients. This study suggested that restricting the classification of patients to skin involvement does not capture the full heterogeneity of SSc. This article was commented on in a "News and Views" in the journal Nature Review Rheumatol by Hinchcliff et al. The authors have described the notable elements of our work and stressed the importance of using "new" statistical tools (such as cluster analysis) to better understand the "phenome" of scleroderma patients. I have presented the study in oral presentations at EULAR congress and Scleroderma World congress.