Development of dendritic cell-based immunotherapy for autoimmunity.

Dendritic cells are professional antigen-presenting cells that maintain immune tolerance to self-antigens by deleting or controlling the pathogenicity of auto-reactive T-cells. Dendritic cell-based immunotherapies show great promise for the restoration of tolerance in autoimmune disease. Dendritic cells can be modified ex vivo to induce stable tolerogenic function and be used as cellular 'vaccines' or they can be targeted in vivo with sophisticated antigen delivery systems. Tolerogenic dendritic cells induce antigen-specific T-cell tolerance in vivo and have therapeutic effects in animal models of autoimmunity. The current challenge is to bring tolerogenic dendritic cell therapy to the clinic.