Isolation, enrichment, and culture of murine epidermal langerhans cells

Langerhans cells are the epidermal variant of the dendritic cell system (1-5). They were-unknowingly, though-the first dendritic cell to be described: In 1868 Paul Langerhans published his observations of a dendritically shaped cell in the human epidermis (6). Until the early 1990s (i.e., the advent of methods for mass production of dendritic cells from blood or bone marrow) Langerhans cells served as a prototype dendritic cell. The basis of our current knowledge on the maturation of dendritic cells stems from experiments with epidermal Langerhans cells (7-9).