Immunobiology of dendritic cells in the respiratory tract: steady-state and inflammatory sentinels?

A network of dendritic cells present in the epithelial lining of the respiratory tract function as sentinel cells which are able to detect the presence of foreign antigenic material and to process these antigens in such a way that they can be transported to local lymph nodes and presented to naive T cells. We will discuss the immunobiology of this network of cells as found in the rat.