Generation and labeling of murine bone marrow-derived dendritic cells with Qdot nanocrystals for tracking studies

Dendritic cells (DCs) are professional antigen presenting cells (APCs) found in peripheral tissues and in immunological organs such as thymus, bone marrow, spleen, lymph nodes and Peyer's patches. DCs present in peripheral tissues sample the organism for the presence of antigens, which they take up, process and present in their surface in the context of major histocompatibility molecules (MHC). Then, antigen-loaded DCs migrate to immunological organs where they present the processed antigen to T lymphocytes triggering specific immune responses. One way to evaluate the migratory capabilities of DCs is to label them with fluorescent dyes. Herewith we demonstrate the use of Qdot fluorescent nanocrystals to label murine bone marrow-derived DC. The advantage of this labeling is that Qdot nanocrystals possess stable and long lasting fluorescence that make them ideal for detecting labeled cells in recovered tissues. To accomplish this, first cells will be recovered from murine bone marrows and cultured for 8 days in the presence of granulocyte macrophage-colony stimulating factor in order to induce DC differentiation. These cells will be then labeled with fluorescent Qdots by short in vitro incubation. Stained cells can be visualized with a fluorescent microscopy. Cells can be injected into experimental animals at this point or can be into mature cells upon in vitro incubation with inflammatory stimuli. In our hands, DC maturation did not determine loss of fluorescent signal nor does Qdot staining affect the biological properties of DCs. Upon injection, these cells can be identified in immune organs by fluorescent microscopy following typical dissection and fixation procedures.