Lee-Chang C, Bodogai M, Moritoh K, et al. Aging Converts Innate B1a Cells into Potent CD8⁺ T Cell Inducers. J Immunol. 2016;196(8):3385-3397. doi:10.4049/jimmunol.1502034

This article will be discussed on November 14th at Biotech without Borders as part of the Deep Dive series.

In the context of the review which this paper is paired with for Deep Dive, this is an example of “altered intercellular communication”. Specifically this is about the immune system behaving differently over time that is referred to as immunosenecence.

This is a follow up paper to an earlier observation by the group that a subset of B cells that accumulate in elderly mammals (4-1BBL⁺). These cells are shown to induces anti-tumor CD8⁺ T-cells in mice. In this report, they investigate a mechanistic hypothesis as to how these cells develop during aging. Through their experiments they demonstrate that certain cytokines produced by aging myeloid cells induce a subset of B cells which can activate CD8⁺ T-cells in an antigen dependent manner to express GrB. They also show limited data which support that a similar subset of B cells in humans also respond in the same way to aging myloid cells and induce a similar subset of T-cells.