Antigen processing and autophagy function in adjuvant treated dendritic cell

Abstract Dendritic cell (DC) and macrophage are the powerful antigen presenting cells. These show remarkable antigen processing function. It has been reported that antigen processing is enhanced by adjuvant. In DC and macrophage, LPS or IFNγ induces cell proliferation, cytokine production, antigen presentation to naive T cell. Among DC subset, CD8 positive DC enhances autophagy function especially in cross presentation. It is still nuclear how DC processes antigen by ubiquitin proteasome pathway or by autophagy pathway. To induce more effective immune response on vaccination or immune therapy, we study the effect of adjuvant treatment for autophagy function in DC and macrophage. Three types of different culture condition were used to establish DC subsets and compared to those function of macrophage. Then analyzed the antigen processing capacity as well as the autophagy function. We induced DC in vitro culture with GM-CSF, GM-CSF with IL-4, GM-CSF with IL-15, then stimulated DCs or macrophage by using LPS or IFNγ for up to 24 hours before antigen uptake. On antigen uptake and processing, GM-CSF induced or GM-CSF with IL-15 induced DC showed antigen processing, however GM-CSF with IL-4 induced DC showed active antigen processing within 60 min. Contrary to active antigen processing, GM-CSF with IL-14 –DC did not show any inducible effect after adjuvant treatment, but GM-CSF or GM-CSF with IL-15-DC increased the autophagy function. On the other hand, macrophage could not obtain autophagy effect thorough adjuvant treatment. DCs were studied the gene expression of cytokines, cell surface molecules such as co-stimulation molecules, mannose receptor, to evaluate antigen uptake capacity, processing pattern and autophagy.