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M. Mahevas et al.
A
B
C
Figure 4. Rituximab and belimumab combination affects activated circulating T- follicular helper cells. (A) Gating strategy for circulating T- follicular helper cells (cTfh) cells. After gating on CD4+CD45RA– memory T-CD4+ cells in whole blood, cTfh cells were defined as CXCR5+PD1+, and activated cTfh cells as CXCR5+PD1+ICOS+. (B) Percentages of cTfh and (C) activated Tfh cells at week 0 (W0), W4, W12, W24, W36 and W52 in patients receiving rituximab and belimumab or rituximab alone. *P<0.05, **P<0.01.
depletion seems to be a promising strategy with high effi- cacy and acceptable safety.
Disclosures
MMa received funds for research from GSK, and received fees from LFB; BG served as an expert for Amgen, Novartis, LFB and Roche: he received funds for research from Amgen and Roche; MMi received consultancy fees from Amgen, Novartis and Argenx; DG received consultancy fees from Novartis and Shire Takeda.
Contributions
MMa designed the study and initiated this work; MMa, BG, MMi, IA and EC wrote the report; all authors made substantial contributions to acquisition of data, revised the article critically and gave final approval of the manuscript to be submitted.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Laura Smales for editorial assistance; Roxane Kaponou Johnson and Alexis Vandenberghe for technical assistance. E. Crickx was supported by a Poste d’accueil Inserm.
Funding
This study was initiated by the investigators and partially financed with an open grant from GSK, which played no role in designing the study, collecting and analyzing the data, or writing the article. The study was funded by a grant from Programme Hospitalier de Recherche Clinique - PRTS 2013 (Ministère de la Santé). The sponsor was Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris (Département de la Recherche Clinique et du Développement).
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