Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
The role of T cell help to B cells was discovered only a few years after the discovery of B cells. In this Timeline article, the author describes the key events that led to the identification of T follicular helper (TFH) cells as the main T helper cell type for B cells.
As we celebrate 50 years since his seminal Nature paper describing separate lineages for B cells and T cells in the chicken, Max Cooper looks back at the early discoveries that made this breakthrough possible and describes how the B cell field emerged.