A cryopreservation method of human peripheral blood mononuclear cells for efficient production of dendritic cells

The establishment of a cryopreservation method for unstimulated fresh peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) with nearly 100% viability would greatly contribute to the conduct of various immunological experiments. The cells most sensitive to freezing and thawing procedure seem to be dendritic cells (DC) and their precursors, which are of the most potent antigen-presenting cells. The authors investigated and established a method of cryopreserving fresh PBMC from which DC were recovered and differentiated efficiently by using recombinant (r) GM-CSF and rIL-4. PBMC frozen in the presence of 12% dimethylsulfoxide and 25-30% fetal calf serum recovered DC as efficiently as freshly obtained PBMC. Established DC could also be cryopreserved in the presence of 12% DMSO with their viability maintained at more than 90%. The 12% DMSO freezing solutions were superior to both the 10% DMSO solution and the previously reported DC freezing medium (2 M or 15.4% DMSO). The DC obtained from the cryopreserved PBMC expressed HLA-DR, HLA-DQ, CD80 and CD86 antigens, and stimulated allogenic PBMC to an extent almost identical to that obtained from fresh PBMC. These findings indicate that the conditioned medium utilized here enables safe cryopreservation of DC and DC precursors in PBMC.