Interaction of dendritic cells with biomaterials.

The interconnections between innate and adaptive immunity, with a focus on dendritic cells (DCs), in the context of combination products, are discussed. Biomaterials are shown to act as an adjuvant in the enhancement of the adaptive immune response to co-delivered antigen. Biomaterials are considered as agonists for DC maturation and several hypotheses as to the mechanism by which DCs recognize and respond to biomaterials are presented. There is the conceptualization of biomaterials with the idea of 'danger signals'. The goal is to design biomaterials to control DC phenotype and in this way control immune responses to combination products.