Sugar-coated signaling in follicular lymphoma.

In this issue of Blood, complementary studies by Amin et al and Linley et al demonstrate that sugar moieties linked to surface immunoglobulin (sIg) of follicular lymphoma (FL) cells directly interact with endogenous lectins within the lymphoma niche and lead to activation of downstream B-cell receptor (BCR) signaling pathways. In addition to providing further insight into the role of the microenvironment in lymphomagenesis, these findings expose a unique molecular interaction that may represent a viable target for therapeutic intervention.