Project description:Depending on how an antigen is perceived, dendritic cells (DCs) mature in an immunogenic or tolerogenic manner, safeguarding the balance between immunity and tolerance. Whereas the pathways driving immunogenic maturation in response to infectious insults are well characterized, the signals driving tolerogenic maturation in homeostasis are still poorly understood. Here we demonstrate that engulfment of apoptotic cells triggers homeostatic maturation of conventional cDC1s in the spleen. This process can be modeled by engulfment of empty, non-adjuvanted lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), is marked by intracellular accumulation of cholesterol, and highly unique to type 1 DCs. Engulfment of apoptotic cells or cholesterol-rich LNPs leads to activation of the LXR pathway driving cellular cholesterol efflux and repression of immunogenic genes. In contrast, simultaneous engagement of TLR3 to mimic viral infection via administration of poly(I:C)-adjuvanted LNPs represses the LXR pathway, thus delaying cellular cholesterol efflux and inducing genes that promote T cell immunity. These data demonstrate how DCs exploit the conserved cellular cholesterol efflux pathway to regulate induction of tolerance or immunity and reveal that administration of non-adjuvanted cholesterol-rich LNPs is a powerful platform for inducing tolerogenic DC maturation.
Project description:Depending on how an antigen is perceived, dendritic cells (DCs) mature in an immunogenic or tolerogenic manner, safeguarding the balance between immunity and tolerance. Whereas the pathways driving immunogenic maturation in response to infectious insults are well characterized, the signals driving tolerogenic maturation in homeostasis are still poorly understood. Here we demonstrate that engulfment of apoptotic cells triggers homeostatic maturation of conventional cDC1s in the spleen. This process can be modeled by engulfment of empty, non-adjuvanted lipid nanoparticles (LNPs), is marked by intracellular accumulation of cholesterol, and highly unique to type 1 DCs. Engulfment of apoptotic cells or cholesterol-rich LNPs leads to activation of the LXR pathway driving cellular cholesterol efflux and repression of immunogenic genes. In contrast, simultaneous engagement of TLR3 to mimic viral infection via administration of poly(I:C)-adjuvanted LNPs represses the LXR pathway, thus delaying cellular cholesterol efflux and inducing genes that promote T cell immunity. These data demonstrate how DCs exploit the conserved cellular cholesterol efflux pathway to regulate induction of tolerance or immunity and reveal that administration of non-adjuvanted cholesterol-rich LNPs is a powerful platform for inducing tolerogenic DC maturation.
Project description:Dendritic cells (DCs) play a crucial role in the regulation of innate and adaptive immune responses. DCs initiate adaptive immune responses after their migration to secondary lymphoid organs, a process mainly driven by the expression of the chemokine receptor CCR7. LXR ligands/oxysterols released by tumors were shown to dampen DC migration to secondary lymphoid organs by the inhibition of CCR7 expression. We studied the gene expression modulation of DCs undergoing maturation (by LPS) in the presence of the oxysterol 22R-Hydroxycholesterol (22R-HC).
Project description:XCR1+ dendritic cells (DC) have been shown to excel in antigen cross-presentation for the activation of naïve CD8 T cells. This property was reported to be associated to the subset of the XCR1+ DC expressing IL-12b upon ex vivo stimulation for 24 h with a mixture of CpG, IFN-γ, and GM-CSF (Lin ML et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2008. PMID: 18272486). DC found in the steady-state non-lymphoid tissues undergo an homeostatic, tolerogenic, maturation and migrate to the draining lymph nodes to interact with naive autoreactive T cells and induction their peripheral tolerance. In contrast, spleen DC are thought to exist solely in an immature state. The aim of this study was to re-examine heterogeneity within steady state spleen XCR1+ DC, in particular examining whether this population encompass a fraction of mature DCs as assessed through their expression of CCR7 and/or the Il12b gene. Indeed, we show that a small fraction of XCR1+ spleen DC constitutively mature into two distinct but likely successive activation stages characterized as CCR7+ and CCR7+Il12b+ respectively, and correlated with increasing ability to cross-present antigen to naïve CD8 T cells. Transcriptomic analysis of the subsets of XCR1+ DC found in steady state spleen unexpectedly showed that their homeostatic maturation was unexpectedly associated with up-regulated of many genes thought to drive pro-inflammatory T-cell responses and previously found to be commonly induced upon maturation of distinct DC subsets in response to stimulation by various microbial-type stimuli (Vu Manh TP et al. Eur J Immunol. 2013. PMID: 23553052). Thus, our results reveal that spleen XCR1+ DC undergo constitutive maturation and emphasize the common mechanisms operating upon homeostatic, tolerogenic, DC maturation versus microbial-type stimuli-induced, immunogenic, DC maturation. DC were isolated from the spleen of untreated Il12b-EYFP reporter mice (Reinhardt RL et al. J Immunol. 2006. PMID:16849470) mice as previously described (Robbins SH et al. Genome Biol. 2008. PMID: 18218067; Baranek T et al. Cell Host Microbe. 2012. PMID: 23084923). DC subsets were sorted by flow cytometry according to the marker combinations described in the âcharacteristics: phenotypeâ field for each sample.
Project description:The liver X receptors (LXRs) are ligand-activated nuclear receptors with established roles in the maintenance of lipid homeostasis in multiple tissues. LXRs exert additional biological functions as negative regulators of inflammation, particularly in macrophages. However, the transcriptional responses controlled by LXRs in other myeloid cells, such as dendritic cells (DC), are still poorly understood. Here we used gain- and loss-of-function models to characterize the impact of LXR deficiency on DC activation programs. Our results identified an LXR-dependent pathway that is important for DC chemotaxis. LXR-deficient mature DCs are defective in stimulus-induced migration in vitro and in vivo. Mechanistically, we show that LXRs facilitate DC chemotactic signaling by regulating the expression of CD38, an ectoenzyme important for leukocyte trafficking. Pharmacological or genetic inactivation of CD38 activity abolished LXR-dependent induction of DC chemotaxis. Using the LDLR-/- mouse model of atherosclerosis, we also demonstrated that hematopoietic CD38 expression is important for the accumulation of lipid-laden myeloid cells in lesions, suggesting that CD38 is a key factor in leukocyte migration during atherogenesis. Collectively, our results demonstrate that LXRs are required for efficient emigration of DCs in response to chemotactic signals during inflammation.
Project description:Renal dendritic cells play key roles in renal homeostasis and during kidney allograft rejection. Microarray analysis aims to evaluate whether dendritic cells modulate their gene expression profile in relation to their distribution in the different renal compartments (with varying biophysical characteristics), under homeostatic conditions and during acute renal allograft rejection (3 days post-transplantation). Renal dendritic cells from homeostatic (healthy) kidneys and donor/host dendritic cells from renal allografts (3 days post-kidney transplantation) were isolated from cortex and medulla, through fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS). Total RNA was isolated from FACS-sorted cells and amplified. The cDNA product was fragmented, biotin-labeled and hybridized on Affimetrix arrays.