1. ¹Department of Biopharmaceutics, Kyoto Pharmaceutical University, 5 Nakauchi-cho, Misasagi, Yamashina-ku, Kyoto 607-8414, Japan
2. ²Department of Pharmaceutics, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Mukogawa Women's University, 11-68 Kyuban-cho, Koshien, Nishinomiya, Hyogo 663-8179, Japan
3. ³Division of Cellular and Gene Therapy Products, National Institute of Health Sciences, 1-18-1 Kamiyoga, Setagaya-ku, Tokyo 158-8501, Japan

Correspondence: Dr Naoki Okada, E-mail: okada@mb.kyoto-phu.ac.jp

Received 29 August 2002.

Abstract

Since dendritic cells (DCs) play a critical role in establishing antigen-specific adaptive immune responses, in the past several years, therapeutic strategies using genetically modified DCs against cancer and infectious diseases have attracted increasing attention. In the present study, we demonstrated that RGD fiber-mutant adenovirus vector (AdRGD) exhibited markedly superior gene transduction efficiency in mouse bone marrow-derived DCs (mBM-DCs) compared to conventional adenovirus vector (Ad). Likewise, this vector exhibited superior major histocompatibility complex class I-restricted presentation of antigen derived from the delivered gene in mBM-DCs. In order to investigate the effect of Ad-infection on the DC-differentiation process (maturation), we used three types of AdRGD and three conventional Ad to transduce mBM-DCs. These vectors carried either no transgene, LacZ gene, or gp100 gene. Infection by any of the Ad vectors enhanced the expression of MHC class II molecules in mBM-DCs. CD80, CD86, and CD40 expression and IL-12 production were more efficient in AdRGD-infected mBM-DCs than in conventional Ad-infected cells. Contrary to our expectations, endocytotic activity of mBM-DCs decreased only slightly upon Ad-infection, whereas antigen uptake by lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-driven mature mBM-DCs was significantly impaired. However, our reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction analysis revealed that Ad-infection resulted in the upregulation of the chemokine receptor CCR7 and downregulation of CCR6 in mBM-DCs and LPS-stimulated cells. We, therefore, concluded that Ad-infection directly influenced DC-maturation, although the effects were milder than under LPS-stimulation. In addition, this change in the immunologic properties of DCs resulted primarily from an increase in the number of Ad-particles capable of invading the cells rather than from the expression of foreign genes. AdRGD-infection caused greater induction of maturation than conventional Ad-infection, irrespective of the type of transgene inserted.