Strain-specific variations in the development of dendritic cells in murinebone-marrow cultures

The dendritic cell (DC) is a professional antigen-presenting cell of centra l importance in immunity. In this paper, we examined DCs generated by 11-da y culture of bone-marrow cells from the four mouse strains C57BL/6J, BALB/c A, C3H/HeN and B10.PL-H2(u) (73NS)/Sn with respect to cell yield as well as surface-marker phenotype and morphology. We also investigated the phenotyp ic changes and the T-cell stimulatory activity of the DCs induced by bacter ial lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Morphologically, we observed low levels (5-10 %) of granulocyte contamination of the cultures after a culture period of 1 1 days. Considerable strain-specific differences were found in the expressi on levels of the surface markers in addition to the differences in the rati o of the immature to mature DCs in the cultures that were not stimulated wi th LPS. Furthermore, we found that LPS strongly induces maturation of DCs i n all strains investigated with the exception of the B10.PL strain.