B cells
Unfortunately, B cells are often overlooked; as living, dividing cells that hide away in tissues, they’re harder to isolate and study than the proteins they produce. But the antibodies they deploy can be powerful enough to quash microbes before they break into cells, potentially halting infections in their tracks - Katherine J. Wu
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image by: Immunology
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The cells that can give you super-immunity
We now know that throughout our lifetimes, we are constantly producing new B cells. The body contains up to around 10 billion of them – equivalent to the length of 100 football pitches, if you lined them all up in a row – with each B cell containing receptors that can recognise different types of antigen shapes on the surface of a virus.
This matters because while B cells do not bind to viruses themselves, they can turn into plasma cells when they detect a threat. These plasma cells produce antibodies directed towards the same viral antigen as their native B cell. A less diverse pool of B cells means fewer antibodies that might be capable of neutralising the virus. One of the things…
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Breakthroughs, Boosters, and B cells … Oh My!
The memory B cells will change into another type of B cell, called a plasma cell, and quickly start producing large quantities of antibodies. The antibodies produced by these cells are significantly more effective at stopping the virus than antibodies produced during the first encounter with a virus.
B Cells
B cells have a positive role in priming adaptive CD4+ T cells, but not CD8+ T cells. The magnitude of CD4+ T-cell responses is reduced upon pathogen challenge in B-cell deficient or depleted mice. B cells are also able to dampen T-cell driven immune responses
B cells sustain inflammation and predict response to immune checkpoint blockade in human melanoma
Human B cells express pro- and anti-inflammatory factors and differentiate into plasmablast-like cells when exposed to autologous melanoma secretomes in vitro.
B-cells vs. T-cells: What's the difference?
The immune system is made up of two armies of cells: innate and acquired. Innate immune cells are the body's first line of defense. They quickly respond to foreign cells to fight infection, battle a virus or defend the body against bacteria. Our acquired immunity—also called adaptive immunity—uses T-cells and B-cells when invading organisms slip through that first line. These cells take longer to develop, because their behaviors evolve from learned experiences, but they tend to live longer than innate cells.
Evolution of Human Memory B Cells From Childhood to Old Age
B cells fight viruses and bacteria by producing antibodies following their differentiation into circulating plasmablasts.
Pioneering the B cell approach in MS
A significant advance we’ve seen in the science behind MS treatment over the years has been the discovery of B cells as a critical driver in the disease. Twenty years ago, people believed MS was mainly driven by T cells, which are part of the immune system. In the late ‘90s, several researchers in neurology, discovered that B cells, which are also immune defenders, played a role in MS, too. Both B and T cells cause inflammation in the brain that damages the myelin sheath that insulates the nerves...
Remembrance of Things Past: Long-Term B Cell Memory After Infection and Vaccination
The success of vaccines is dependent on the generation and maintenance of immunological memory. The immune system can remember previously encountered pathogens, and memory B and T cells are critical in secondary responses to infection.
Show Your Immune System Some Love
Antibodies are great and all, but macrophages, B cells, and helper T cells deserve some attention too.
Study Shows How Immune Cells Hone Their Skills to Fight Disease
When a virus attacks the body, the immune system’s B cells produce antibodies to bind to and disable the current invader. At the same time, a squadron of memory B cells heads to special areas of the lymph nodes. These memory B cells will be trained to recognize even tiny amounts of the virus if it ever attacks again.
The cells that can give you super-immunity
In the 1960s, immunologists found that chickens which had their bursa – a major immune organ in birds – destroyed with radiation, lacked certain cells necessary to produce antibodies. These became known as Bursa-derived cells or B cells. By the mid 1970s, it was discovered that these cells form in humans in the bone marrow, before migrating to the lymph nodes or the spleen.
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