About the Authors

Tom L. Van Belle

Contributed equally to this work with: Tom L. Van Belle, Hans Dooms

Johan.Grooten@UGent.be (JG); tom.vanbelle@med.kuleuven.be (TVB)

Affiliation Laboratory of Molecular Immunology, Department of Biomedical Molecular Biology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

Hans Dooms

Contributed equally to this work with: Tom L. Van Belle, Hans Dooms

Affiliation Arthritis Center/Rheumatology Section, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America

Tom Boonefaes

Affiliation Laboratory of Molecular Immunology, Department of Biomedical Molecular Biology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

Xiao-Qing Wei

Affiliation Tissue Engineering and Reparative Dentistry, Dental School, Cardiff University, Heath Park, Cardiff, United Kingdom

Georges Leclercq

Affiliation Department of Clinical Chemistry, Microbiology and Immunology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

Johan Grooten

Johan.Grooten@UGent.be (JG); tom.vanbelle@med.kuleuven.be (TVB)

Affiliation Laboratory of Molecular Immunology, Department of Biomedical Molecular Biology, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: TVB HD TB XQW JG. Performed the experiments: TVB HD TB GL. Analyzed the data: TVB HD TB. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: XQW. Wrote the paper: TVB HD TB XQW GL JG.