Response to: 'Role of interaction between B cells and epithelial cells in pSS' by Pringle et al.

We thank Pringle et al for their interest and their comments1 concerning our recent article demonstrating how salivary gland epithelial cells (SGECs) from patients with primary Sjogren’s syndrome (pSS) can induce survival and activation of B cells.2 They are rising six very interesting questions: (1) F Kroese’s group has extensively studied B cells expressing FcRL4 in pSS.3 4 They have shown that this B cell subset is highly proliferating, express activation markers and participates to the formation of lymphoepithelial lesions. Interestingly, they have shown that FcRL4 mRNA was increased in parotid from patients with pSS with mucosa-associaed lymphoid tissue (MALT) lymphoma. FcRL4 could promote innate signalling in response to chronic antigenic stimulation. For all these reasons, it is tempting to speculate that FcRL4+ B cells could be involved in the crosstalk with SGECs.5 We looked at FcRL4 expression in our RNA-seq data set (figure 1A). We did not detect FcRL4 mRNA in blood, nor in salivary gland biopsy. This could …