Dendritic Cells under Hypoxia: How Oxygen Shortage Affects the Linkage between Innate and Adaptive Immunity

Dendritic cells (DCs) are considered as one of the main regulators of immune responses. They collect antigens, process them, and present typical antigenic structures to lymphocytes, thereby inducing an adaptive immune response. All these processes take place under conditions of oxygen shortage (hypoxia) which is often not considered in experimental settings. This review highlights how deeply hypoxia modulates human as well as mouse immature and mature dendritic cell functions. It tries to link in vitro results to actual in vivo studies and outlines how hypoxia-mediated shaping of dendritic cells affects the activation of (innate) immunity.