Increased frequencies of circulating and tumor-resident Vδ1⁺ T cells in patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma

Abstract

Gamma-delta (γδ) T cells contribute to the innate immune response against cancer. In samples of 20 patients upon DLBCL diagnosis, we found that Vδ1⁺ T cells were the major γδ T cell subset in tumors and PBMCs of patients, while Vδ2 T cells were preponderant in PBMCs of healthy subjects. Interestingly, the germinal center (GC) subtype was associated with an increase in Vδ1⁺ T cells in tumors, whereas the non-GC subtype was associated with a lower frequency of γδ T cells. While circulating Vδ1⁺ T cells of patients or HSs mostly exhibited a naïve phenotype, the majority of tumor Vδ1⁺ T cells showed a central memory phenotype. Resident or circulating γδ T cells from patients were not functionally impaired since they produced high levels of IFN-γ. Collectively, our findings are in favor of γδ T cell activation in tumors and open new perspectives for their modulation in DLBCL immunotherapy.

Keywords:

• Gamma-delta T cells
• diffuse large B-cell lymphoma
• cancer immunosurveillance
• immunotherapy

Acknowledgements

We thank the French Blood Service of Normandy (Caen, France) for the recruitment of the voluntary blood donors.

Potential conflict of interest

Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available with the full text of this article online at https://doi.org/10.1080/10428194.2017.1321751.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by grants from La Ligue Contre Le Cancer (Comité de l’Orne) and ADHRIBAN Association.