Bacteria and bacterial cell wall constituents induce the production of regulatory cytokines in dendritic cell clones.

The primary function of dendritic cells (DC) is the uptake, processing, and presentation of antigens to unprimed T cells, but the regulation of these functions is largely unknown. The study of the signals that maintain DC in a resting state or that drive their activation has been hampered by the difficulties in obtaining pure DC populations. The availability of immortalized DC clones from different tissues (spleen and skin) allowed us to investigate the regulation of cytokine production in response to physiological signals in the absence of contaminating cells. The DC clones exhibited the phenotypical and functional features of DC precursors and could phagocytose, albeit at a low rate, whole bacteria. Heat-inactivated bacteria and bacterial cell wall products were tested for cytokine induction. Lipopolysaccharide, lipoteichoic acid, and gram-negative bacteria were potent inducers of tumor necrosis factor alpha and interleukin 6 release, whereas gram-positive bacteria were less efficient. The results suggest that microbial infections can directly promote cytokine DC release of relevant inflammatory responses as well as in the autocrine activation of DC.