Discovery and characteristics of B cell-like T cells: A potential novel tumor immune marker?

Autor: Yunhe Liu, Ying Xia, Xiaohua Wen, Wentao Li, Yingjie Jia, Xiaoxue Guo, Songshan Ye, Xu Liu, Yan Zhao, Jianchun Yu, Yongtie Guo
Rok vydání: 2020
Předmět:
Zdroj: Immunology Letters. 220:44-50
ISSN: 0165-2478
DOI: 10.1016/j.imlet.2020.01.007
Popis: CD3 and CD19 are the characteristic surface markers of mature T lymphocytes and B lymphocytes of human respectively. A special subset of immune cells that characteristically expressed the surface markers CD19+ of B lymphocytes and CD3+ of T lymphocytes simultaneously (CD19+CD3+ cells, hereinafter referred to as B-T cells) was found in the peripheral blood of human, yet it has not been reported in cancer research before. Our aims were to characterize the expression and possible value of B-T cells in cancer patients.Flow cytometry was applied to analyse the CD19+CD3+ cells, and laser scanning confocal microscope was utilized to prove co-expressing CD19+ of B lymphocytes and CD3+ of T lymphocytes simultaneously on the surface of the cells. Then a total of 523 patients with malignant tumor were enrolled in this study, and 177 healthy donors were recruited as the control group. The levels of CD19+CD3+ cells in peripheral blood were measured by flow cytometry, and the differences between the two groups were compared.The healthy donors and cancer patients all had B-T cells in their peripheral blood, but the percentage of B-T cells was 0.16 % ± 0.11 % and 0.58 % ± 0.38 % respectively, showing statistically significant (P0.0001). There was no significant correlation between the percentage of B-T cells and lymphocyte subsets (P0.05). The percentages of B-T cells in different tumor species were different. The proportion of B-T cells was high in esophageal cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and lung cancer, but it was low in pancreatic cancer, ovarian cancer and kidney cancer. Meanwhile, there was significant difference between esophageal cancer and kidney cancer (P0.001). The distribution of B-T cells in pancreatic cancer and kidney cancer was more concentrated, yet more dispersed in other cancers. Although there was a trend of increase in clinical stage Ⅲ+Ⅳ and a trend of decrease in age above 60 years for breast cancer, gastric cancer and liver cancer, there was no significant difference in the percentage of B-T cells in age, gender, different clinical stages, tumor metastasis, lymph node metastasis, and splenomegaly (P0.05).The percentage of B-T cells in cancer patients was significantly higher than that of healthy donors. B-T cells maybe play a very complicated role in tumor, whether it could be a potential tumor immune marker or not and what are the specific phenotypes and functions of it to need be further verified.
Databáze: OpenAIRE
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