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Cutting Edge: Lack of Evidence for Connexin-43 Expression in Human Epidermal Langerhans Cells¹

Simone C. Zimmerli^2,*, Florence Masson^*, José Cancela, Paolo Meda and Conrad Hauser^*,

^* Division of Immunology and Allergy, Department of Internal Medicine, Geneva University Hospitals and Medical School, Department of Cellular Physiology and Metabolism, Geneva Medical School, and Division of Dermatology, Department of Neurosciences Cliniques et Dermatologic, Geneva University Hospitals and Medical School, Geneva, Switzerland

A provocative study has shown that viral peptides may be transferred in vitro from epithelial cells to APC through connexin-43 gap junction channels. In support of this cross-presentation pathway, the study also reported that human dendritic cells, including Langerhans cells of skin, express connexin-43. In this report we show that if this was the case, the levels of connexin-43 are below those detectable by immunofluorescence, flow cytometry, quantitative PCR of purified CD1a⁺ cells, and electron microscopy, raising questions about the relevance of the connexin-43-dependent mechanism for Langerhans cells of noninflamed human skin.

The costs of publication of this article were defrayed in part by the payment of page charges. This article must therefore be hereby marked advertisement in accordance with 18 U.S.C. Section 1734 solely to indicate this fact.

¹ This work was supported by the Swiss National Foundation Grants 310000-109716 and 310000-109402.

² Address correspondence and reprint requests to Dr. Simone Zimmerli, Allergy Unit, Division of Allergy and Immunology, Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève, 24 Rue Micheli-du-Crest, CH-1211 Geneva 14, Switzerland. E-mail address: Simone.Zimmerli{at}hcuge.ch

³ Abbreviations used in this paper: GJ, gap junction; Cx, connexin; DC, dendritic cell; LC, Langerhans cell.