{"entity":{"id":"paper-antoine-italiano-nature-2020","kind":"paper","name":"B cells are associated with survival and immunotherapy response in sarcoma","aka":[],"tldr":"Paper by Antoine Italiano indexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 31942077, in Nature (2020), one of the most cited records naming an author with this name at Institut Bergonié.","summary":"Soft-tissue sarcomas represent a heterogeneous group of cancer, with more than 50 histological subtypes 1,2. The clinical presentation of patients with different subtypes is often atypical, and responses to therapies such as immune checkpoint blockade vary widely 3,4. To explain this clinical variability, here we study gene expression profiles in 608 tumours across subtypes of soft-tissue sarcoma. We establish an immune-based classification on the basis of the composition of the tumour microenvironment and identify five distinct phenotypes: immune-low (A and B), immune-high (D and E), and highly vascularized (C) groups. In situ analysis of an independent validation cohort shows that class E was characterized by the presence of tertiary lymphoid structures that contain T cells and follicular dendritic cells and are particularly rich in B cells. B cells are the strongest prognostic factor even in the context of high or low CD8 + T cells and cytotoxic contents. The class-E group demonstrated improved survival and a high response rate to PD1 blockade with pembrolizumab in a phase 2 clinical trial. Together, this work confirms the immune subtypes in patients with soft-tissue sarcoma, and unravels the potential of B-cell-rich tertiary lymphoid structures to guide clinical decision-making and treatments, which could have broader applications in other diseases.\n\nIndexed on Europe PMC as PubMed record 31942077 (DOI 10.1038/s41586-019-1906-8). Its author list gives \"Italiano A\" with the affiliation \"Institut Bergonié, Bordeaux, France\", which names Institut Bergonié; that is how the record was matched to Antoine Italiano, and no figure has been checked by an editor.","asOf":"2026-09-22","links":[{"label":"Nature 2020","url":"https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1906-8"},{"label":"PubMed","url":"https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31942077/"},{"label":"Europe PMC","url":"https://europepmc.org/article/MED/31942077"}],"tags":["europepmc-ingest"],"related":[],"cancers":[],"sections":[],"technologies":[],"targets":[],"drugs":[],"companies":[],"institutions":[],"pathways":[],"terms":[],"trials":[],"people":["antoine-italiano"],"bottlenecks":[],"keyPapers":[],"journals":["nature"],"dependsOn":[],"notes":[],"journal":"Nature","year":2020,"doi":"10.1038/s41586-019-1906-8","pmid":"31942077","authors":"Petitprez F, de Reyniès A, Keung EZ, et al.","paperType":"observational","findings":[],"whatItMeans":"One of the most cited papers Europe PMC returns for Antoine Italiano at Institut Bergonié, so it is a natural starting point for reading their work. The record was linked automatically from the author list and affiliation; read the abstract above and the paper itself before relying on any figure.","caveats":["Matched to the person by surname, initials and an affiliation string naming the institution on the Europe PMC record; the summary reproduces the record's abstract and no figure has been verified against the full paper.","Two authors sharing a surname, initials and institution cannot be told apart by this method; the person's profile links are the place to confirm authorship."]},"route":"/key-papers/paper-antoine-italiano-nature-2020/","neighbours":{"person":[{"id":"antoine-italiano","kind":"person","name":"Antoine Italiano","route":"/people/antoine-italiano/"}],"journal":[{"id":"nature","kind":"journal","name":"Nature","route":"/journals/nature/"}]}}