DENDRITIC CELLS FROM SKIN AND BLOOD OF MACAQUES BOTH PROMOTE SIV REPLICATION WITH T-CELLS FROM DIFFERENT ANATOMICAL SITES

The SIV-macaque system offers the opportunity to study the pathogenesi s and immune aspects of a primate retroviral infection in which immuno deficiency also develops, much like HIV infection in humans. Since it is known that human dendritic cells (DCs) are involved in HIV replicat ion, mature cytokine-generated DCs obtained from precursors in the blo od and skin-derived DCs were isolated from healthy rhesus macaques and compared with respect to their ability to support SIV infection. Here , it is shown for both skin- and blood-derived DCs that i) virus produ ction depends on both DCs and T cells, ii) this occurs similarly with T cells from blood, skin, spleen, or lymph nodes, and iii) DCs can tra nsmit virus equally to syngeneic and allogeneic T cells. No difference s between DCs from skin or blood were observed. Therefore, the easily accessible blood-derived DCs of macaques provide an appropriate popula tion to study the role of DCs in immunodeficiency virus infection.