Department of Radiation Medicine and Applied Sciences, Moores Cancer Center, University of California, San Diego, California.
Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology-Oncology, University of California, San Diego, California.
Clin Cancer Res. 2021 Nov 15;27(22):6075-6082. doi: 10.1158/1078-0432.CCR-21-0697. Epub 2021 Jul 6.
The role of B cells in the tumor microenvironment and B-cell-mediated antitumor immune responses remains relatively understudied. Recent seminal studies have discovered that B cells and associated tertiary lymphoid structures correlate with responses to checkpoint blockade immunotherapy and are prognostic for overall survival of cancer patients. B-cell subsets have remarkable functional diversity and include professional antigen-presenting cells, regulatory cells, memory populations, and antibody-producing plasma cells. Importantly, secreted antibodies can independently activate innate immune responses and induce the cancer immunity cycle. Thus, B cells and B-cell-mediated antibody responses comprise the largely underappreciated second arm of the adaptive immune system and certainly deserve further attention in the field of oncology. Here, we review the known functions of B cells in the tumor microenvironment, the contribution of B cells to the antitumor activity of immunotherapies, and the role of B cells in the overall survival of cancer patients.
B 细胞在肿瘤微环境中的作用以及 B 细胞介导的抗肿瘤免疫反应仍然相对研究不足。最近的重要研究发现,B 细胞和相关的三级淋巴结构与检查点阻断免疫治疗的反应相关,并且与癌症患者的总生存预后相关。B 细胞亚群具有显著的功能多样性,包括专业抗原呈递细胞、调节细胞、记忆群体和产生抗体的浆细胞。重要的是,分泌的抗体可以独立地激活先天免疫反应,并诱导癌症免疫循环。因此,B 细胞和 B 细胞介导的抗体反应构成了适应性免疫系统的很大程度上被低估的第二臂,在肿瘤学领域肯定值得进一步关注。在这里,我们综述了已知的 B 细胞在肿瘤微环境中的功能、B 细胞对免疫治疗抗肿瘤活性的贡献以及 B 细胞在癌症患者总生存中的作用。