Indirect activation of DC by immunomodulatory mediators

Our lab has obtained data on indirect activation of DC by immunomodulatory mediators.

TLRs signal directly for DC activation but also promote production of immunomodulatory mediators by many other cell types. These mediators could be sufficient to activate DC indirectly, thereby potentially allowing responses to organisms with which DC do not come into direct contact.

We tested this hypothesis and, surprisingly, found that indirect signals alone led only to partial DC activation and resulted in clonal expansion of T cells lacking typical Th1 or Th2 function. These results show that indirect signals by themselves cannot fully substitute for TLR triggering in DC and further suggest that the function of TLRs and other pattern recognition receptors expressed by APC is to regulate production of Th-directing cytokines, allowing APC to couple the class of adaptive immune response to the nature of the pathogen. This has important implication for the design of cancer vaccines and is of direct relevance to the goals of the network.

• molecule type
• Toll like receptor

• cell type
• T cell,
• dendritic cell,
• T helper cell 1,
• T helper cell 2

• experimental factor type
• Stimulation by molecular entity factor

created over 16 years ago (2 March 2009)    last modified over 12 years ago (18 June 2012)   [ RDF ]   [ RelFinder ]