Matthieu Mahévas, Marc Michel, Jean-Claude Weill, Claude-Agnès Reynaud
Abstract
A large number of auto-immune diseases are treated with rituximab, an antibody against CD20 that depletes most of the B-cells in the organism. The response to this treatment depends largely on the disease and the type of lymphoid cells involved in the auto-immune process. We recently reported that B-cell depletion in immune thrombocytopenia induced the appearance of pathogenic long-lived plasma cells in the spleen, which were not present before treatment or in non-auto-immune conditions. The spleen of treated patients produced an excess of the cytokine B-cell activating factor, which in in vitro-cultured splenic cells, could increase the longevity of plasma cells. Our results suggested that, paradoxically, the B-cell depletion itself, by altering the splenic milieu, promoted the differentiation of short-lived auto-immune plasma cells into long-lived ones. We describe the cellular and cytokinic components of the splenic plasma cell niche, notably CD4(+) T cells and discuss possible survival factors that could be targeted simultaneously with rituximab-mediated B-cell depletion to interfere with plasma cell persistence.
Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutical Science
1
<1%
Other
6
6%
Unknown
21
19%
Attention Score in Context
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 28 February 2015.
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#20,014,336
of 25,461,852 outputs
Outputs from Frontiers in immunology
#22,671
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#221,738
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Outputs of similar age from Frontiers in immunology
#240
of 503 outputs
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