The peritoneal cavity provides a protective niche for B1 and conventional B lymphocytes during anti-CD20 immunotherapy in mice.

Although anti-CD20 immunotherapy effectively treats human lymphoma and autoimmune disease, the in vivo effect of immunotherapy on tissue B cells and their subsets is generally unknown. To address this, anti-mouse CD20 mAbs were used in a mouse model in which the extent and kinetics of tissue B cell depletion could be assessed in vivo. CD20 mAb treatment depleted most mature B cells within 2 days, with 95-98% of B cells in the bone marrow, blood, spleen, lymph nodes, and gut-associated lymphoid tissues depleted by day 7, including marginal zone and follicular B cells. The few spleen B cells remaining after CD20 mAb treatment included pre-B, immature, transitional, and some B1 B cells that expressed CD20 at low levels. By contrast, peritoneal cavity B cells expressed normal CD20 densities and were coated with CD20 mAb, but only 30-43% of B1 cells and 43-78% of B2 cells were depleted by day 7. Spleen B cells adoptively transferred into the peritoneal cavity were similarly resistant to mAb-induced depletion, while transferred B cells that had migrated to the spleen were depleted. However, peritoneal B1 and B2 cells were effectively depleted in mAb-treated wild-type and C3-deficient mice by thioglycolate-induced monocyte migration into this otherwise privileged niche. Inflammation-elicited effector cells did not promote peritoneal cavity B cell depletion in FcR-deficient mice treated with CD20 mAb. Thus, the majority of CD20(+) cells and B cell subsets within lymphoid tissues and the peritoneum could be depleted efficiently in vivo through Fc-dependent, but C-independent pathways during anti-CD20 immunotherapy.