Rat bone marrow-derived dendritic cells generated with GM-CSF/IL-4 or FLT3L exhibit distinct phenotypical and functional characteristics

Dendritic cells are professional APCs that play a central role in the initiation of immune responses. The limited ex vivo availability of dendritic cells inspires the widespread use of bone marrow-derived dendritic cells as an alternative in research. However, the functional characteristics of bone marrow-derived dendritic cells are incompletely understood. Therefore, we compared functional and phenotypic characteristics of rat bone marrow-derived dendritic cells generated with GM-CSF/IL-4 or FLT3 ligand bone marrow-derived dendritic cells. A comparison of surface markers revealed that FLT3 ligand-bone marrow-derived dendritic cells expressed signal regulatory protein α, CD103, and CD4 and baseline levels of MHC class II, CD40, and CD86, which were highly up-regulated upon stimulation. Conversely, GM-CSF/IL-4-bone marrow-derived dendritic cells constitutively expressed signal regulatory protein α, CD11c, and CD11b but only mildly up-regulated MHC class II, CD40, or CD86 following stimulation. Expression of dendritic cell-associated core transcripts was restricted to FLT3 ligand-bone marrow-derived dendritic cells . GM-CSF/IL-4-bone marrow-derived dendritic cells were superior at phagocytosis but were outperformed by FLT3 ligand-bone marrow-derived dendritic cells at antigen presentation and T cell stimulation in vitro. Stimulated GM-CSF/IL-4-bone marrow-derived dendritic cells secreted more TNF, CCL5, CCL20, and NO, whereas FLT3 ligand-bone marrow-derived dendritic cells secreted more IL-6 and IL-12. Finally, whereas GM-CSF/IL-4-bone marrow-derived dendritic cell culture supernatants added to resting T cell cultures promoted forkhead box p3(+) regulatory T cell populations, FLT3 ligand-bone marrow-derived dendritic cell culture supernatants drove Th17 differentiation. We conclude that rat GM-CSF/IL-4-bone marrow-derived dendritic cells and FLT3 ligand-bone marrow-derived dendritic cells are functionally distinct. Our data support the current rationale that FLT3 ligand-bone marrow-derived dendritic cells mostly resemble classic dendritic cells but comprise additional minor subpopulations, whereas GM-CSF/IL-4-bone marrow-derived dendritic cells resemble monocyte-derived inflammatory dendritic cells (iNOS-positive monocyte-derived cells).