Null donors favor prepared immunologists

Abstract

In this issue of Blood, Golay et al carefully examine activation and effector functions of normal neutrophils and of FcgRIIIB (CD16B) negative neutrophils isolated from the blood of a rare null donor.1 Their work reveals, for the first time, that normal neutrophils also express FcgRIIIA (CD16A) and that the 2 receptors on neutrophils mediate distinctly different effector functions for processing antibody-opsonized substrates.