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:Cell division cycle 42 (Cdc42) is a member of the Rho GTPase family and has pivotal functions in actin organization, cell migration and proliferation. Cdc42 has been shown to regulate antigen (Ag)-uptake in immature dendritic cells (DC) and controls their migration from tissues to lymph nodes. Previous reports demonstrated that Cdc42 is inactivated upon DC-maturation to avoid continued Ag-acquisition. To further study the molecular mechanisms of DC-control by Cdc42, we used bone marrow-derived DCs from Cdc42-deficient mice. We show that Cdc42-deficient DCs are phenotypically mature without additional maturation stimuli, as they upregulate CD86 from intracellular storages to the cell surface. They also accumulate invariant chain (Ii)-MHC class II complexes at the cell surface, which cannot efficiently present peptide Ag for priming of Ag-specific CD4 T cells. Lack of Cdc42 in immature DCs does not allow MHC class II maturation, as lysosomal Cathepsins are lost into the supernatant and Ii-MHC class II complexes cannot mature. Therefore Cdc42-deficient DCs are "pseudomature" and lose most functional hallmarks of antigen-presenting cells. Our results propose that Cdc42 keeps DCs in an immature state, while downregulation of Cdc42-activity during maturation facilitates generation of CD86+MHCII+ mature DCs.
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.