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Updated: Mar 8, 2026
Author Spotlight: A Model to Study the Systemic and Local Dynamics of CD8+ T Cells During LN Metastasis
Published on: January 26, 2024
Vaccine draining lymph nodes are a source of antigen-specific B cells
Stephanie C Pero1, Yu-Jing Sun1, Girja S Shukla1
1Department of Surgery, Vermont Cancer Center, University of Vermont College of Medicine, 89 Beaumont Avenue, Given Building E310, Burlington, VT 05405, USA.
Purpose:
Our research is focused on using vaccine draining lymph nodes as a source of immune cells to better understand the immune response and to attempt to generate new anti-cancer reagents. Following a vaccine, harvesting the lymph node can only be done once. We endeavored to determine the range of times that B cells secreting anti-KLH antibodies were present in the node of KLH-vaccinated mice.
Results:
Following vaccination the total number of mononuclear cells (MNCs) increased in the vaccine-draining lymph node (VDN). The percentage of MNCs that were B cells nearly doubled. B cells recovered from the node that secreted anti-KLH antibodies were evident by day 7. The number continued to increase and then slowly decreased over the observed time range to 28days after vaccination. The VDN, compared to the spleen, the bone marrow and the nonVDN, contained a higher percentage of B cells that secreted anti-KLH antibodies.
Conclusions:
After a vaccine, there is a multi-week window of time when an increasing number of B cells are present in a VDN that secrete anti-KLH antibodies. These results support using the VDN as a source for B cells that secrete anti-vaccine antibodies.
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