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Assessing the Innate Sensing of HIV-1 Infected CD4+ T Cells by Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells Using an Ex vivo Co-culture System.
Published on: September 1, 2015
Plasmacytoid dendritic cells capture and cross-present viral antigens from influenza-virus exposed cells
Gabrielle Lui1, Olivier Manches, Juliette Angel
1Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble, France.
Abstract:
Among the different subsets of dendritic cells (DC), plasmacytoid dendritic cells (PDC) play a unique role in secreting large amounts of type I interferons upon viral stimulation, but their efficiency as antigen-presenting cells has not been completely characterized. We show here, by flow cytometry, with human primary blood PDC and with a PDC cell line, that PDC display poor endocytic capacity for soluble or cellular antigens when compared to monocyte-derived myeloid DC. However, immature PDC efficiently take up cellular material from live influenza-exposed cells, subsequently mature and cross-present viral antigens very efficiently to specific CD8+ T cells. Therefore, during viral infection PDC not only secrete immunomodulatory cytokines, but also recognize infected cells and function as antigen cross-presenting cells to trigger the anti-viral immune response.
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