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Review
. 2002 Jun;109(12):1519-26.
doi: 10.1172/JCI15962.

Exploiting dendritic cells to improve vaccine efficacy

Ralph M Steinman  1 , Melissa Pope
Affiliations
Review

Exploiting dendritic cells to improve vaccine efficacy

Ralph M Steinman et al. J Clin Invest. 2002 Jun.
No abstract available

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Lymphocyte and DC circulations. Naive lymphocytes circulate from blood via high endothelial venules into lymphoid tissues. B cells then move into follicles while T cells percolate through T cell areas, both eventually leaving the node via efferent lymphatics to return to the blood. Upon antigen recognition, some activated B and T cells, as well as DCs and follicular dendritic cells (a distinct cell type that, unlike DCs, retains native antigens as immune complexes), congregate in the follicles to generate the germinal center reaction for antibody formation. Other activated B and T cells return to inflammatory sites via the blood or become memory cells. Some of the latter are termed “effector memory” cells, because they can rapidly produce cytokines and are positioned in peripheral tissues. In parallel to the circulation of lymphocytes, DCs move from blood to tissues and then into afferent lymphatics, which bring DCs into the T cell areas where they eventually die. The plasmacytoid subset of DCs enters the T cell areas directly from blood; their subsequent fate is unclear.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Some specializations of DCs for vaccine capture, MHC-peptide complex formation, and T cell stimulation. DCs express many adsorptive uptake receptors whose natural ligands are generally not yet known. For this reason, anti-receptor antibodies are often used experimentally as surrogate antigens. Several receptors are type II transmembrane proteins with a single external C-type lectin domain found on distinct DC subsets: DC-SIGN and the asialoglycoprotein receptor on monocyte-derived DCs, BDCA-2 on plasmacytoid cells, and Langerin on Langerhans cells. MMR and DEC-205 are type I proteins with eight to ten contiguous C-type lectin domains; these receptors can also be expressed on certain endothelia and epithelia. Other receptors, such as FcγR, are not DC-restricted but function selectively in DCs to mediate the exogenous pathway for presentation on MHC class I products. Beyond antigen capture, DCs (or particular DC subsets) express high levels of select TLRs and thereby mature in response to specific microbial stimuli. During maturation, DCs produce and export high levels of several costimulatory molecules for T cell growth and differentiation. DC maturation regulates many of the elements involved in antigen capture and processing.
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