Dendritic cell microarrays for screening immunomodulatory molecules in the development of tolerogenic vaccines

摘要

A recent strategy to ameliorate autoimmune diseases such as type-1 diabetes (T1D) involves inducing specific immunological tolerance via upregulation of tolerance-promoting dendritic cells (DCs). The ability to screen vaccine formulations intended to increase this tolerogenic phenotype on patient-derived DCs, however, represents a substantial barrier to this approach. We show that utilizing the cell-based microarray described here to investigate these immunomodulatory effects adds a valuable tool to the existing immunological methodologies, and provides a means to robustly investigate libraries of immunomodulating factors.