An Atlas of B Cell Composition in Human Cancer

The immune system is a key defense line against cancer. Here, the so-called adaptive immune system, which consists of T and B cells is of vital importance. T cells are responsible for directly attacking and killing tumour cells while B cells are primarily responsible for producing antibodies. Recent breakthroughs in cancer therapies all focused on a (re-) activation of T cells to enable them to attack the cancer cells again. This led to unprecedented survival rates in previously difficult to treat cancers such as melanoma. We were among the first to show that not only T but also B cells are vital to the anti-tumour immune response in human melanoma. If B cells are depleted, the tumour-attacking T cells also disappear which is linked to a reduced response rate to the novel anti-cancer immunotherapies. Based on previous studies we know that this effect is independent of any antibody production. But even though we and others made this observation, we still do not know how B cells exert their function in the context of anti-tumour immunity and, more importantly, how we can influence this unknown mechanism to increase the therapeutic efficacy of anti-cancer immunotherapies. In this project we will try to take the next step in order to investigate how B cells influence the anti-tumour immune response. We will do this by investigating what kind of B cells are present in different types of cancer and how they interact with the other cells present in the tumour microenvironment. We hope that this data will enable us to create more detailed hypotheses on how B cells shape the anti-tumour immune response. The great success of anti-cancer immunotherapies has clearly shown that this is a highly efficient path for novel anti-cancer therapies. Therefore, identifying an additional route to more efficient immunotherapies can greatly increase our options for more efficient treatments.