B Cell Trophic Factors and B Cell Antagonism in Autoimmune Disease

The understanding of B cell biology has increased and expanded enormously in the last three decades. It is now known that B cells, in addition to just differentiating into antibody-secreting cells, serve many other vital functions. For example, their roles as antigen-presenting cells and cytokine-producing cells as well as effector cells and regulatory cells are well appreciated now. Indeed, the pathologic role of B cells in many autoimmune disorders may be largely autoantibody-independent. Toda