B cells in Transplantation

Recently at the ATC 2010, a nice abstract was presented regarding Regulatory B cells. They are coming!!!
T cell immunglobulin and mucin -1 or TIM-1 is a costim molecule that controles T effector cells.
The listed abstract below showed that Tim-1 is more highly expressed on naive B cells than on T cells.
Depleting B cells led to Tim-1 accelerated islet cell rejection in these mice.  Re constitution of B cells led to prolonged graft survival and and transfer of Tim-1 + B cells prolonged allograft survivial suggesting that Tim-1 + b cells could be B regulatory cells like Foxp3+ T reg cells.
Again, no human data yet. more studies to come!
Exciting stuff!

Reference:
Ding Q, Yueng M, Najafian N, et al. Regulatory B cells are identified by TIM-1 and can be induced through TIM-1 ligation to promote allograft survival. ATC 2010, San Diego, Calif, Abstract 167.