Abstract
The original concept stated that immature dendritic cells (DC) act tolerogenically whereas mature DC behave strictly immunogenically. Meanwhile, it is also accepted that phenotypically mature stages of all conventional DC subsets can promote tolerance as steady-state migratory DC by transporting self-antigens to lymph nodes to exert unique functions on regulatory T cells. We propose that in vivo 1) there is little evidence for a tolerogenic function of immature DC during steady state such as CD4 T cell anergy induction, 2) all tolerance as steady-state migratory DC undergo common as well as subset-specific molecular changes, and 3) these changes differ by quantitative and qualitative markers from immunogenic DC, which allows one to clearly distinguish tolerogenic from immunogenic migratory DC.
Footnotes
This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft through grants to M.B.L. (LU851/14-1), to R.A.B. (BA5939/2-1), and to B.E.C. (CL419/2-1, CL419/4-1 and CRC-1292) and the Interdisciplinary Center for Clinical Research Würzburg (A-408). B.E.C. and R.A.B. are members of the Research Center for Immunotherapy Mainz. All authors equally contributed to the conceptualization and writing of this article.
Abbreviations used in this article:
- BM
- bone marrow
- DC
- dendritic cell
- inf-migDC
- immunogenic migratory DC
- LC
- Langerhans cell
- LN
- lymph node
- MHC I
- MHC class I
- MHC II
- MHC class II
- migDC
- migratory DC
- pDC
- plasmacytoid DC
- pTreg
- peripheral Treg
- RA
- retinoic acid
- resDC
- DC functioning as resident sensor
- SP
- spleen
- TNF-BMDC
- TNF-matured bone marrow–derived DC
- tolDC
- tolerogenic DC
- tol-migDC
- tolerogenic migratory DC
- Treg
- regulatory T cell
- tTreg
- thymic CD4+Foxp3+ Treg.
- Received November 22, 2020.
- Accepted January 11, 2021.
- Copyright © 2021 by The American Association of Immunologists, Inc.
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