Monitoring the intracellular routing of internalized antigens by immunofluorescence microscopy

Professional antigen-presenting cells such as dendritic cells (DCs) and macrophages internalize extracellular antigens, process them intracellularly, and present the resulting antigen-derived peptides in the context of MHC I or MHC II molecules. Since the intracellular routing of the antigen determines whether antigens are presented on MHC I or MHC II molecules, a profound analysis of the intracellular distribution of the internalized antigens is of high interest. Here, we describe an immunofluorescence protocol to monitor the intracellular routing of the model-antigen Ovalbumin in bone marrow-derived dendritic cells (BM-DCs). This protocol describes a procedure to stain such cells with antibodies against different endosomal markers, such as EEA1 and LAMP1, and can be easily adopted to other antigen-presenting cells or antigens.