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The germinal center is where B cells refine their antibodies, and it is where follicular lymphoma and most diffuse large B-cell lymphomas begin. These papers cover how the germinal center works, how a lymphoma's cell of origin is traced back to it, and the immune and stromal cells that make up the tumor microenvironment.
Not medical advice. These are short, plain-English summaries of published research, written for education. They are not treatment recommendations. Questions about an individual situation belong with a hematologist or oncologist.
Radtke AJ, Postovalova E, et al. Cancer Cell. 2024.
Using several complementary profiling platforms on samples from patients in a prospective clinical trial, the authors looked for tumor and microenvironment features linked to early relapse of follicular lymphoma. Features such as stromal desmoplasia (scar-like tissue remodeling) and altered follicle growth patterns were present about 20 months before first progression.
Radtke AJ, Roschewski M Blood. 2024.
This review describes how follicular lymphoma cells reshape the normal lymph node, changing T cells, macrophages, stromal cells and the structure of the follicles. It surveys single-cell and spatial technologies for studying the FL microenvironment and argues for sampling at key time points over the course of the disease.
Victora GD, Nussenzweig MC Annu Rev Immunol. 2022.
A review of how germinal centers work: B cells multiply, mutate their antibody genes and compete to bind antigen better, then leave as memory B cells or antibody-secreting plasma cells. It summarizes the cell types involved and newer work on how clones compete and shape the antibodies found in blood.
Han G, Deng Q, et al. Blood Cancer Discov. 2022.
Single-cell RNA sequencing of follicular lymphoma mapped tumor and immune cells, including a cytotoxic CD4 T-cell population, and defined four FL subtypes by their T-cell makeup. Combined with exome sequencing, it linked tumor mutations and MHC class II expression on FL cells to differences in the surrounding T cells.
Steen CB, Luca BA, et al. Cancer Cell. 2021.
The authors built EcoTyper, a machine-learning framework that combines bulk expression deconvolution with single-cell data, to map cell states in DLBCL. They found five malignant B-cell states and recurring multicellular ecosystems in the microenvironment that capture clinical differences beyond cell-of-origin and genetic subtypes.
Kotlov N, Bagaev A, et al. Cancer Discov. 2021.
Analyzing the microenvironment of 4,655 DLBCL samples from several cohorts, the study defined four lymphoma microenvironment categories linked to distinct biology and clinical behavior. It also described ways tumor cells evade microenvironmental constraints and identified extracellular matrix features that could be targeted in preclinical models.
Roider T, Seufert J, et al. Nat Cell Biol. 2020.
Single-cell RNA sequencing and flow cytometry of nodal B-cell lymphomas found transcriptionally distinct malignant subpopulations within the same tumor. These subpopulations responded differently to drugs in the laboratory, highlighting intratumor heterogeneity as a factor in treatment response.
Holmes AB, Corinaldesi C, et al. J Exp Med. 2020.
Single-cell RNA sequencing of human germinal center B cells revealed several linked subpopulations beyond the classic dark and light zones, including the precursors of memory B cells and plasma cells. Gene signatures from these subpopulations assigned a single-cell cell of origin to about 80% of DLBCLs and identified new prognostic subgroups.
Mlynarczyk C, Fontán L, et al. Immunol Rev. 2019.
This review explains why germinal center B cells, which already show several features of cancer cells, give rise to most B-cell lymphomas. It focuses on the BCL6 transcription factor and on recurrent mutations in epigenetic and immune signaling genes, and on how these insights inform new precision therapy strategies.
Basso K, Dalla-Favera R Nat Rev Immunol. 2015.
A review of the functional stages of the germinal center reaction and the transcription factors and signaling pathways that control each one. It shows how the same regulators are hijacked by the genetic lesions found in different B-cell lymphomas.
10 papers, newest first. Titles, authors, journals, years and DOIs were checked against PubMed on 2026-10-20. Back to the Research library.