About the Authors

Egídio Torrado

Affiliation Trudeau Institute Inc., Saranac Lake, New York, United States of America

Jeffrey J. Fountain

Affiliation Trudeau Institute Inc., Saranac Lake, New York, United States of America

Richard T. Robinson

Current address: Department of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States of America

Affiliation Trudeau Institute Inc., Saranac Lake, New York, United States of America

Cynthia A. Martino

Affiliation Trudeau Institute Inc., Saranac Lake, New York, United States of America

John E. Pearl

Affiliation Trudeau Institute Inc., Saranac Lake, New York, United States of America

Javier Rangel-Moreno

Affiliation Division of Allergy, Immunology and Rheumatology, Department of Medicine, University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, New York, United States of America

Michael Tighe

Affiliation Trudeau Institute Inc., Saranac Lake, New York, United States of America

Robert Dunn

Current address: Pfizer-Centers for Therapeutic Innovation, San Diego, California, United States of America

Affiliation Biogen Idec, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America, and San Diego, California, United States of America

Andrea M. Cooper

acooper@trudeauinstitute.org

Affiliation Trudeau Institute Inc., Saranac Lake, New York, United States of America

Competing Interests

The authors have the following interests. Author RD is employed by Pfizer-Center for Therapeutic Innovation and was previously employed by Biogen-Idec. Biogen-Idec provided the anti-CD20 used in this study under an MTA agreement for research purposes, and while they reviewed the manuscript prior to submission they did not ask the authors to make any changes to the interpretation of the science nor the text of the manuscript. There are no further patents, products in development or marketed products to declare. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: ET RTR JR-M RD AMC. Performed the experiments: ET JJF CAM JEP JR-M MT. Analyzed the data: ET AMC. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: RD. Wrote the paper: ET JR-M RD AMC.