Characteristics of B lymphocyte infiltration in HPV + head and neck squamous cell carcinoma

作者：Zhang Si-wei, Bozhi Wang, Fen Ma, Fangjia Tong, Bingqing Yan, Tianyang Liu, Huanhuan Xie, Lianhao Song, Siyang Yu, Lanlan Wei · 发表于：Cancer Science · 年份：2021 · DOI：10.1111/cas.14834 · 被引用次数：39 · 研究领域：Cancer Immunotherapy and Biomarkers、Immune cells in cancer、Immunotherapy and Immune Responses

Abstract Human papillomavirus (HPV) is an important etiological factor of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). HPV + HNSCC patients usually have a better prognosis, which probably results from the higher infiltration of B lymphocytes. This study was purposed to detect the infiltration of B lymphocyte subsets and the correlation between B lymphocyte subsets and the prognosis in HPV‐related HNSCC. In this study, 124 HPV + and 513 HPV − HNSCC samples were obtained from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database for transcriptomic analysis. Infiltration of B lymphocytes subsets was detected with 7 HPV + HNSCC and 13 HPV − HNSCC tissues through immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence. One HPV − HNSCC sample was detected with single‐cell sequencing for chemokine analysis. In the results, the infiltration of plasma cells (CD19 + CD38 + ) and memory B cells (MS4A1 + CD27 + ) was higher in HPV + HNSCC samples. High infiltration of plasma cells and memory B cells was related to a better prognosis. High density of B lymphocytes was positively correlated with high CXCL13 production mainly from CD4 + T lymphocytes in HNSCC. These results indicated that a high density of plasma cells and memory B cells could predict excellent prognosis. CD4 + T lymphocytes might affect B lymphocytes and their subsets through the CXCL13/CXCR5 axis in HNSCC.