Background: The presence of B cells in early stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is associated with longer survival, however, the role these cells play in the generation and maintenance of anti-tumor immunity is unclear. B cells differentiate into a variety of subsets with differing characteristics and functions. To date, there is limited information on the specific B cell subsets found within NSCLC. To better understand the composition of the B cell populations found in NSCLC we have begun characterizing B cells in lung tumors and have detected a population of B cells that are CD79A(+)CD27(-)IgD(-). These CD27(-)IgD(-)(double-negative) B cells have previously been characterized as unconventional memory B cells and have been detected in some autoimmune diseases and in the elderly population but have not been detected previously in tumor tissue. Methods: A total of 15 fresh untreated NSCLC tumors and 15 matched adjacent lung control tissues were dissociated and analyzed by intracellular flow cytometry to detect the B cell-related markers CD79A, CD27 and IgD. All CD79A(+) B cells subsets were classified as either naive (CD27(-)IgD(+)), affinity-matured (CD27(+)IgD(-)), early memory/germinal center cells (CD27(+)IgD(+)) or double-negative B cells (CD27(-)IgD(-)). Association of double-negative B cells with clinical data including gender, age, smoking status, tumor diagnosis and pathologic differentiation status were also examined using the logistic regression analysis for age and student's t-test for all other variables. Associations with other B cell subpopulations were examined using Spearman's rank correlation. Results: We observed that double-negative B cells were frequently abundant in lung tumors compared to normal adjacent controls (13 out of 15 cases), and in some cases made up a substantial proportion of the total B cell compartment. The presence of double-negative cells was also found to be inversely related to the presence of affinity-matured B cells within the tumor, Spearman's coefficient of -0.76. Conclusions: This study is the first to observe the presence of CD27(-)IgD(-)double-negative B cells in human NSCLC and that this population is inversely correlated with traditional affinity-matured B cell populations.
Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:arizona.edu/oai:arizona.openrepository.com:10150/627195 |
Date | 15 February 2018 |
Creators | Centuori, Sara M., Gomes, Cecil J., Kim, Samuel S., Putnam, Charles W., Larsen, Brandon T., Garland, Linda L., Mount, David W., Martinez, Jesse D. |
Contributors | Univ Arizona, Canc Ctr, Univ Arizona, Canc Biol Grad Interdisciplinary Program, Univ Arizona, Dept Surg, Univ Arizona, Dept Med, Div Hematol Oncol, Univ Arizona, Dept Mol & Cellular Biol, Univ Arizona, Cell & Mol Med |
Publisher | BIOMED CENTRAL LTD |
Source Sets | University of Arizona |
Language | English |
Detected Language | English |
Type | Article |
Rights | © The Author(s) 2018. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. |
Relation | https://translational-medicine.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12967-018-1404-z |
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