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Updated: Jul 28, 2026
Fluorescence-activated Cell Sorting for Purification of Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells from the Mouse Bone Marrow
Published on: November 4, 2016
Flt-3 ligand (FL) drives differentiation of rat bone marrow-derived dendritic cells expressing OX62 and/or CD161
Cynthia S Brissette-Storkus1, J C Kettel, T F Whitham
1Eye and Ear Institute and Department of Ophthalmology, Brain Tumor Center of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, Pennsylvania 15213, USA. cbstork@pitt.edu
Abstract:
Bone marrow-derived dendritic cells (DC) of the rat have not been as well characterized as those from the mouse. Here, large quantities of bone marrow-derived rat DC were generated when Flt-3 ligand (FL) was used as an adjunct to granulocyte macrophage-colony stimulating factor (GM-CSF) and interleukin-4 (IL-4). These cells displayed a typical DC phenotype, expressing MHC class II, CD54, CD80, CD86, and CD11b/c. These DC also uniformly expressed low levels of CD161 and expressed OX62 in a bimodal distribution. Few cells were recovered from cultures grown without FL, and they failed to express OX62 or CD161. The DC generated with FL were more potent antigen-presenting cells in mixed lymphocyte cultures than cells grown without FL, and among FL-derived cells, the OX62+ cells were slightly more stimulatory than OX62- cells. Thus, FL is a useful cytokine for obtaining large quantities of functional rat DC subsets in vitro.
