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Updated: May 22, 2026

In Vitro Differentiation Model of Human Normal Memory B Cells to Long-lived Plasma Cells
Published on: January 20, 2019
BLIMP1α, the master regulator of plasma cell differentiation is a tumor supressor gene in B cell lymphomas
Katerina Vrzalikova1, Ciaran Bernard John Woodman, Paul Gerard Murray
1School of Cancer Sciences, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom. k.vrzalikova@bham.ac.uk
Aims:
The aim of this review was to summarize recent knowledge of the structure and function of a transcriptional repressor, B lymphocyte induced maturation protein 1 (BLIMP1) and its participation in the pathogenesis of B lymphomas.
Methods And Results:
This review summarizes the structure and function of BLIMP1, its major target genes and its role as a tumour suppressor in B cell lymphomas. We review our recent data implicating the loss of BLIMP1α as an important step in the pathogenesis of the Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) associated B cell lymphomas.
Conclusions:
BLIMP1 is a transcriptional repressor essential for the differentiation of germinal centre (GC) B cells to plasma cells. The loss of BLIMP1 in GC B cells could contribute to the pathogenesis of EBV-associated lymphomas by preventing plasma cell differentiation and viral replication.
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