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Tumor-infiltrating B cell is associated with the control of progression of gastric cancer

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Abstract

This study aimed to further explore the clinicopathological correlation of B cell infiltration in gastric cancer (GC) and its impact on prognostic. By immunohistochemical method, CD20+ B cells, CD3+ T cells, CD66b+ tumor-associated neutrophils, CD163+ tumor-associated macrophages, and CD57+ natural killer cells were analyzed in consecutive sections of 584 GC tissues and 69 normal adjacent tissues. Kaplan–Meier and Cox regression analyses determined the relationship between clinical relevance or prognosis and B cell infiltration. The correlation between total B cell infiltration and various T cell subtype infiltration in GC tissues from 407 patients in the TCGA data was also analyzed. Kaplan–Meier and Cox regression analyses determined the effects of total B cell infiltration and various B cell subtype infiltration on the prognosis of patients with GC. The infiltration level of CD20+ B cells was positively correlated with that of T cells (risk ratio [RR] = 0.0930), especially CD4+ T cells and CD8+ T cells (P < 0.05). A high level of CD20+ B cell infiltration was significantly associated with low lymph node involvement and low TNM stage (P < 0.05). High levels of CD20+ B cell infiltration were significantly associated with improvements in overall survival and disease-free survival. Univariate Cox regression and multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that CD20+ B cell infiltration was an independent protective factor of prognosis. Higher levels of class-switched memory B cell and plasma cell also reflected better overall survival, and class-switched memory B cell and plasma cell were independent protective factors for prognosis. The findings indicate that B cell infiltration in GC, especially switched memory B cells and plasma cells, has a significant effect on tumor progression and prognosis.

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Funding

This study was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos.: 81672707, 31670922, and 81602165), the Key R&D Program of Zhejiang Province (Grant No.: 2020C03029), and the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (Grant No.: LY17H160053).

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Authors

Contributions

Z.G.Z., X.Y.X., and J.Z. conceived and designed the experiment; Z.L.N. and D.X. (Dong Xing) collected data and were responsible for data acquisition; T.M.Z., N.D., D.X. (Dan Xiang), J.M.Q., C.Y.H., and X.S. performed the data analysis and statistical analysis; Z.L.N. and D.X. (Dong Xing) wrote the paper and contributed significantly to this work; Z.G.Z., X.Y.X., and J.Z. contributed to the theoretical analysis, they revised the manuscript critically for important intellectual content, and they were co-corresponding authors. All authors gave final approval to the manuscript submission.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Zhiguang Zhao, Xiangyang Xue or Jie Zhou.

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The authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

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This study was approved by the Institutional Research Ethics Committee of the Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University. Experiments on human tissues were performed in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

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Written informed consent was provided by all subjects.

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Ni, Z., Xing, D., Zhang, T. et al. Tumor-infiltrating B cell is associated with the control of progression of gastric cancer. Immunol Res 69, 43–52 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12026-020-09167-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12026-020-09167-z

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