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Updated: Aug 24, 2026

The Isolation, Differentiation, and Quantification of Human Antibody-secreting B Cells from Blood: ELISpot as a Functional Readout of Humoral Immunity
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Cutting edge: IL-21 is a switch factor for the production of IgG1 and IgG3 by human B cells

Jérôme Pène1, Jean-François Gauchat, Sandrine Lécart

  • 1Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale, Unité 454, Montpellier, France.

Journal of Immunology (Baltimore, Md. : 1950)
|April 22, 2004
PubMed

IL-21 is a cytokine that regulates the activation of T and NK cells and promotes the proliferation of B cells activated via CD40. In this study, we show that rIL-21 strongly induces the production of all IgG isotypes by purified CD19(+) human spleen or peripheral blood B cells stimulated with anti-CD40 mAb. Moreover, it was found to specifically induce the production of IgG(1) and IgG(3) by CD40-activated CD19(+)CD27(-) naive human B cells. Although stimulation of CD19(+) B cells via CD40 alone induced gamma 1 and gamma 3 germline transcripts, as well as the expression of activation-induced cytidine deaminase, only stimulation with both anti-CD40 mAb and rIL-21 resulted in the production of S gamma/S mu switch circular DNA. These results show that IL-21, in addition to promoting growth and differentiation of committed B cells, is a specific switch factor for the production of IgG(1) and IgG(3).

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