Fig. (1) Stimulation of TLR-7 leads to protection against spontaneous apoptosis. CLL cells (2 x 106/ ml) from three different patients were incubated for 48 h in the presence or not of Resiquimod 1µM. At the end of the incubation period, aliquots were collected and the amount of nucleosomes in the cytoplasm was quantified by the “Cell Death detection kit “ (Roche) as described in Materials and Methods. Results from triplicate samples are expressed as % of enrichment in cytoplasmic nucleosomes, in comparison with control unstimulated cells taken as 100%. The differences between control and Resiquimod-treated cells were analysed with the Student’s t test. * p ; 0.05 ;** p ; 0.01