A Comparative Study of the T Cell Stimulatory and Polarizing Capacity of Human Primary Blood Dendritic Cell Subsets

Figure 3

Human blood DCs induce proliferation of naive CD4⁺ T cells. Human CD1c⁺ mDCs, CD141⁺ mDCs, and pDCs were cultured overnight with the stimuli as indicated. The next day, allogeneic naive CD4⁺ T cells were added to the DCs (ratio 5 : 1). Proliferation was measured at day four of coculture by determining tritiated thymidine incorporation. The graph shows the mean proliferation ± SEM in counts per minute [cpm] (). Each experiment was performed in triplicate for CD1c⁺ mDCs and pDCs and in duplicate for CD141⁺ mDCs. Significance was tested for each subset in comparison with T cells alone by Kruskal-Wallis test followed by Dunn’s testing (; ; ).