Dendritic cells articles from across Nature Portfolio

Human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) is a ubiquitous pathogen associated with morbidity and mortality in the immunocompromised or immunonaive context. Here the authors show that HCMV exploits STING signalling and subverts the interferon response to support infection of monocyte derive dendritic cells.

Reis e Sousa et al. show that cDC2As and cDC2Bs are derived from distinct subsets of bone marrow pre-cDC2s, suggesting that the two lineages are ontogenetically determined.

Recognition of tumour antigen induces dendritic cell activation and migration to the lymph node. Here, the authors use photoconvertible mice to demonstrate that some activated dendritic cells are retained in tumours and gradually lose function, but their ability to support local anti-tumour responses can be augmented by anti-PD-L1 blockade.

Randolph and colleagues analyze the immune cells in the human and mouse peritoneum and show that the major populations of serous cavity-resident macrophages in humans and mice represent distinct differentiation stages of an overlapping differentiation program.

Understanding the ontogeny of conventional dendritic cells (cDCs) is a major aim in the field. The fate of progenitors of the recently described subsets of mouse cDC2s (cDC2A and cDC2B) is determined in the bone marrow.

Mouse macrophages express specialized genes particular to the organs they inhabit, but whether the same applies in humans is unclear. In human peritoneal fluid, we identified many macrophage phenotypes, including two specialized macrophage types that corresponded to distinct mouse peritoneal macrophages. However, their abundances were markedly different between species.

A study in Nature reports a lactate–HIF1α–NDUFA4L2 pathway in intestinal dendritic cells that regulates the inflammatory priming of encephalitogenic T cells.

Confusion exists as to whether transitional dendritic cells are a bone fide subset or just a transitional state, as the name indicates. New data are complicating matters further by showing some interesting heterogeneity in these cells.