[Human peripheral blood monocyte derived dendritic cell culture and mature regulation]

Mature dendritic cells are potent antigen-presenting cells that initiate primary immune responses, while immature dendritic cells have quite different properties from mature dendritic cells and are tolerance inducer actually. Here we describe the method of using monocyte condition medium to generate dendritic cells of different maturation phases from nonproliferating progenitors in human peripheral blood. The procedure involves two steps. The first step(or priming phase) is to work on a 6-7-day culture of plastic-adherent blood monocyte in medium supplement with GM-CSF and IL-4. The second step (or differentiation phase) requires the exposure to monocyte conditioned medium. Only the dendritic cells generated by the first step are actually immature, with strong immature dendritic cell features such as active endocytosis, the same expression of monocyte marker CD14, and much of the MHC class II still lies within intracellular compartments (MIIC). The second stage dendritic cells have all the features of mature dendritic cell, including a stellate shape, nonadherence to plastic, the expression of dendritic cells restricted marker CD83, and very strong T cell stimulatory function. All of these dendritic cell properties are retained for at least 3 days when the cytokines are removed, suggesting that these populations are stable and terminally differentiated. Since progression from immature to mature dendritic cell is entirely dependent on exogenously added growth factor such as monocyte condition medium, the peripheral blood monocyte may help to harness synchronized population of mature and immature dendritic cells for studies or therapies.