Yong-Jun Liu has a long-lasting interest in dendritic cells and B cells and a more recent passion for plasmacytoid dendritic cells. He extends our knowledge of the role of plasmacytoid dendritic cells in positively regulating B cell differentiation, which was previously proposed to be dependent upon type-I IFN and IL-6 that are produced by this special subset of dendritic cells. Indeed, this nice study shows that CpG-activated plasmacytoid dendritic cells acquire the ability to induce memory CD27+ B cells to differentiate into immunoglobulin secreting plasma cells through the expression of CD70.
Plasmacytoid dendritic cells regulate B cell proliferation and differentiation